so I'll continue even though this is being recorded. One of the last questions I got to ask Sojin Roshi was in one of our Thursday night gatherings. I'm not going to go in a straight line, I'm going to pull in different things and just we'll see how that, what that cooks up for us. And that Thursday night I questioned him. I have for a long time been studying him. How is it that he's such a good teacher? How is it that he knows what to say to people in a way that's direct and gets at something? Please know I'm not thinking he was perfect in his answers, but he really had a knack of understanding what was useful. I wanted to know his secret. And what he said to me, of course his answers

[01:06]

are specific to the person but we can all learn from them, what he said to me was, I care about the stories. I care about the stories people tell me. We won't go into his history about that. You've heard that other places. His ability to hear the wish behind the story, the deeper functioning behind the story was uncanny. It was intimate and real and came from a helping place. As Thich Nhat Hanh says, real healing comes from deep listening. I was, I would add real healing comes from deep presence, doesn't it? I'm just gonna watch my time because I can go on tangents here. So what about this story thing? I feel like on the one side I've been told that stories are a

[02:09]

problem, right? Just forget the story. No. When you're lost in thought and zazen, just come back to the breath. Just forget about the story. Stories that we tell about each other are problems. They can be gossip, prejudice. They can reinforce an idea of what is instead of creating possibility or having curiosity about not knowing what's happening now. What is this in front of me right now? The kind of therapy that I did over the years, I'm not knocking therapy at all. I think it's critical for part of what I'm talking about for some people. But part of the therapy for me was to get behind the story so I could see through it and move on. At least that's how it felt to me back in the days that that was an important part of my life. Like there's something wrong for having certain stories. And it's said that our problems come with

[03:15]

having a story that's gone wrong in some way. But the truth is stories are good. Stories are essential. They make us human. They connect us to community, to family, to our ancestors, Buddhists and otherwise, and to place. We can't live without stories. Stories make us human. They give meaning to our lives. We find the inner hero of our own story which can give us direction and hope. And sometimes it can hold us back in some idea of what exactly that looks like. So as I've always already said, in a certain way we'll get to how this is just hope. We'll get to how this is just part of my story today. I feel like sometimes in

[04:16]

our Zazen instruction, it's all about being in the present moment. It's all about showing up right here right now. How do we relate that to the stories that we carry along or the history that we have? How do we transform those stories? Why is it that a good spiritual teacher cares deeply about the story? Is it somehow that the deeply listening and remembering the details, the life stories and the current conundrums that are important in understanding a person reveals what their affinity to practice, what their way-seeking mind is? Does it help us know who that person really is? I think maybe that's the wrong Buddhist term, but I think maybe it points to a kind of orientation of how we each individually find the way in our life. When you take lay ordination, you're

[05:21]

given a way name. It took me a while to understand that way name is about what is it, where is the bright light of practice that kind of was the awakening of your bodhicitta and your orientation to practice. I'm missing my Mediterranean gestures here. So people know that they are where they want to be and they're able to stand on the ground, get up from the ground and stand on the ground as Suzuki Roshi says, and not only so. And so does the spiritual path involve finding the correct story or getting rid of stories or learning stories in a new way? Is there a way to transform the story and what's the relationship of the story to the stories we tell ourselves about who we are who we can and cannot be, our internal ones and the external ones that may be

[06:24]

applied on us for cultural, historical, economic, familial, etc etc ideas of what it means to be who we are. So now I want to introduce another strand to this talk and it's a favorite koan of mine from the Mulamang Khan, The Tale of the Ox, case 38. When I had this video visit with Daniel and had this kind of rush of recognition of something in this person I hadn't seen before, I thought about the tale of the ox and it's not because I had untangled this koan, but I just knew that there was a connection and so he gave me the opportunity to chew on this for a while and I want to throw it out for you to consider too. A little time, I'm not going to do the koan in great detail but I'm just I'm going to give you

[07:28]

enough to kind of follow the train of where what's been going on for me with it. So the koan itself is a story about goso or wutsu and it's just simply this. It is like, it is like a buffalo that passes through a lattice window. Its head, horns, and all the legs pass through. Why can't its tail pass through? One more time. It's like a buffalo that passes through a lattice window. Its head, horns, and four legs all pass through. Why can't its tail pass through? A clue to the koans always reside in the teacher's turning story. So let's just say a thing about wutsu's wake-up story. That was a big opening for him. You may have already received your big wake-up story

[08:31]

somewhere. So his turning story was an exchange between another student and his teacher and the other student says if subject and object are one, how can the fact be realized? Like if you're not outside of it, how can you see what's really happening? And the teacher, wutsu's teacher, said it's like drinking water and knowing it is cold or hot. And wutsu knew that though he understood cold and hot, he did not understand it personally. He did not really understand it personally and that was the quest of his dharma that led him to tell us that or led him to ask us why the tail can't get through. To know something personally, really thoroughly, I think is the same as Genjo Koan. Being like a tiger when she takes to the mountains and a dragon when he enters the water. It's like the

[09:40]

grizzly bear that I saw on Kodiak Island fishing. The Kodiak bear was entirely Kodiak bear fishing for the fish in the stream. He totally knew his place. So just a little bit more on the water buffalo. The water buffalo or water ox is us. It's the farm animal who puts the plow through the muddy rice fields. Practice. This noble ox is considered part of the pantheon of Buddhist animals which includes Samantabhadra's elephant and Manjushri's lion. This is something, someone for us really to pay attention to. And the ox is the sidekick in the ox herding pictures of course. Some of you will know the ox herding pictures as the original graphic novel, maybe the original series

[10:49]

of pictures that point to different aspects of maturation and Zen practice. And as I remember them, I haven't studied them, as I remember them, one of the last ones is the monk riding back off with what you see is the ox's tail as he rides away. So this is a good image for us. So once again you might say that the buffalo is plowing the fields of the self, of mind, or of our lives. So Aki Kodo, one of my favorite quotes of him is that we practice to become a mature person. So the buffalo is doing that. We're doing that with the buffalo. How do we do that? Well we sit down. We take one of the four noble positions. So Zen is the field where we plant the question to which we perhaps unknowingly

[11:58]

bring our inmost request and layer by layer from calm, usually, eventually, and eventually a non-discerning mind pay attention, pay attention to what's happening in our experience completely. Put another way, we put the mind in neutral, opening up our thinking and discriminating mind to be with what is. And from that place, we're with whatever happens. We have the opportunity to have the experience and sometimes we do. Do a little bit. As we sit, we become aware of the activity of our mind. I think early on for many of us, we realize we have a

[12:59]

body in a new and different way and it's capable of producing sensations in different ways than we knew of. How many sessions have you sat through, maybe today, with the pain in your back, knee, neck, and you've wondered what harm you might be doing to yourself and wondered whether you should move or not. Sometimes maybe you should for your well-being, but oftentimes the mind has gotten tense or is responding to a sensation that's unpleasant. And little by little, by some attention-paying and hanging with it, you realize that sensation might actually change of its own, that you don't need to do anything to it. And that's, I think, a kind of first reassurance that what seems like an important experience maybe is more mutable than what we think. And then

[14:02]

it's a little harder. We become pretty quickly aware of feelings. Feelings come up in the mind as we sit and they can be pretty attractive. They can be lustful or creative. They can be irritated. They can really grab our attention. They can seem like really what's happening. This, again, I'm referencing Sojin Roshi a lot here, but an early teaching that I saw on the Zendo was a person I didn't actually realize had issues with anger. I was relatively new. And she raised her hand after a lecture and said, but what do I do about my anger? And he rose up, it seemed like he rose up, and he said in a strong loud voice, be the anger. And I

[15:05]

went, oh my god. Anger has been one of my issues, too, and I just couldn't imagine opening to it in that way. It was frightening. But it stood out, you know. Somehow I felt like he was trustworthy, even though that seems like really unsettling instruction to be given. Over time, being able to sit just with whatever feeling comes in, I tapped into anxiety. That anxiety has been a driving force also. And to my amazement, one day as I was driving away my car, going someplace, I had one of those feelings of terrible anxiety. And I allowed myself just to thoroughly be it, and something shifted. Not turning away from, not getting caught up in it, not on some subtle measure judging it,

[16:07]

trying to exclude it, trying to make nice with it, just thoroughly being in the body with the sensation of anger, anxiety, lust, boredom, can be very helpful. Ideas come up in Zazen, too, all the time. They may seem as innocuous as balancing your book and making your grocery list, or it can be as troublesome as spending a 30-day sasheen rehashing the same old issue that happened with someone, right? At some point again, going around and around, you get bored with it, you see through it, you have another experience that somehow lets you know it wasn't at all what you thought it was, and something shifts. Formations, the Sankara, the formations, I think, are where our really ingrained habits lie.

[17:09]

Now, and the way I want to talk about them for this talk, or I'm trying to talk about them for this talk, looking at that time again, are those stories that we tell about ourselves, that seem more personal than our views, more personal than our idea that we're the center of all activity, but that there's somehow permanent, there is somehow a permanent fixed self that has these particular qualities that we've internalized. And that's a really hard one to shift, I think. The wheat farmer who grew up to be a success in tech and ecology, who's faced at a young age with a cancer that's going to kill him, how did that happen? No. So, and I believe that they change in a similar kind of way. We can't cut them out or push them away. The storyline that says, I'll always be this way.

[18:18]

I've been, you name it, I've been sensitive, I've been irritable, I've been successful, I've been attractive, I've been strong my whole life, I've been better than, I've been worse than, how did those stories change? How do we reconcile them with the dissonance of who we are? The Six Ancestors Huinan in the Platform Sutra, as Hosan Sensei has often pointed us to, says we take care of those stories. Take care of, I think, means to give them our full attention. It's the same kind of care that Sojin gave us, that is to trust the story. Trust it, don't make it go away. Don't try and transform it. Don't reify it, but trust that the story occurs

[19:23]

in you. Trust the story and explore it. Grapple with it. What is this about it? Wrestle with the feelings that come up around it. Sit quietly with it. Don't turn away with it. Know it completely, like hot and cold. Know it completely. Who's there? What's there? Really? Does it really not change? Is it really the way you think it is? Is there some moment, perhaps, with the story of what happened when, oftentimes it's in our childhood, that we see through it when we get really intimate, when we listen really closely, when we accept it as it comes up here and now, maybe it shifts. Maybe it shifts. I feel like it shifts. Now, some parts of our lives are immutable. It's given in Buddhism. The Buddha

[20:26]

said that there's some things that aren't karmic. There are basic personalities. I hate to tell us basic personalities of different types. He enumerated three. The natural disasters and the weather, although we can say that he didn't know about climate change back then, but that was part of his teaching. So, let me just come down here. These samkaras can transform. The transformation is a mystery and a gift of grace when it happens. Realizing I'm telling a lot of my stories, but that's what I know. So, think of your own. As I'm saying this, be in touch with your own. Here's mine. As many years ago now, I was on my way to Tassajara to do a practice period, and I had made

[21:33]

very excruciatingly careful plans to take care of my agent and beloved dog. At the very last minute, literally hours before I was due to leave, something happened. Something that happened, I felt, had great effect on the plan I had made and put my dog at some risk. And I came unglued. I started, I was enraged. No, I had that kind of rage in me. I was enraged. I made more noise. I screamed and yelled, and the fury just rose off of me like heat off of a sidewalk in New York when it's 110 degrees. It was terrible. And then I fell apart. I started sobbing, [...] uncontrollably sobbing. I hadn't cried like that since I was a child. And then I stopped, and I pulled myself together, and I went inside, and I picked up the phone,

[22:39]

and I called Surgeon. And I told him what had happened, and he said to me, that's not so good. Now, that may sound like it was unkind, but after so many years of practicing together, he knew me. He knew I was ready, not to indulge my story, but to bring me to the present of what had happened. He trusted practice in me. And that episode for which I made great apologies and for which I am still in front of you repenting for having had that happen in a certain way, I felt so much shame and also insight to go to a place that I'd never had the stability or the understanding or the capacity to go to. Don't do this in your own home without practicing with someone, and someone should never do this without other kinds of support. But this was a great turning of somehow being ready to open to the story in a different kind of way

[23:45]

that set a stage for other slow, kind of like climate change. The temperature goes up a little bit, things start to shift, and before you know it, time goes on and part of the avalanche falls off. It's kind of, I think, this kind of spiritual change for us as it happens for us all of us as we practice. I'm speaking for all of you as we practice. It's imperceptible, mysterious, we don't know how it happens, and it's grace. So I think that in the end, Dan understood his life in a way that he'd never understood it before. In fact, he became his life, he was his life. Usually we live in a small life, you know, like small mind. Small mind,

[24:49]

the ideas that constrict us, the day-to-day worries, the things that we get tangled up in, the things we make first world problems out of, if you will, at least the minor ones when they occur. Usually we live from that place. I'll speak for myself normally. I live from that place pretty consistently. But he had found his big life. He had found how to live in the present, out of the essence for who he was. I saw it. I could see it on the screen. I could see it with his family. It was very moving. This is true of the grizzly bear. You didn't even have to practice. It was true at many times for Sojin Roshi. I often see it, and maybe you have too, in people who've had to overcome great barriers, usually of external projection, be it for their sexual orientation, their race, their disability,

[25:52]

place they've been put in their family. People have done the deep work, and so they can take their place. Sojin used to say that we should take our place, neither too small nor too big, not inflated, but to take our place for who we really are. I think I'll skip that one. And just say it's an ongoing process. It goes deeper and deeper. Before we know it, we'll all be swimming in an ocean that's a lot higher. When that's a dharmic, that's good. When it's climate change, not so much. So what happens to our stories? What happens to the me we think we know when we see through them? What is ours to keep? We can't give away our personalities, our form, our energy, the basic things we come with. These

[27:00]

are the first five of the ten suchnesses in the Lotus Sutra, the basic way we come into the world, personality, form, energy, and kind of our orientation to the things that we're drawn to do with our lives. We can't exactly change the causes and conditions that affect us. We can't exactly change the immediate effects. We have some impact on later effects, but we certainly can transform our orientation, the way in which they affect us. That comes somewhat by cognitive understanding, but I think it comes from this much more subtle relationship with ourselves. And isn't it not true that to know yourself well is not to know yourself at all, to have that complete flexibility and freedom?

[28:01]

And the Lakota people say, or a Lakota elder was asked, why do people tell stories? And the answer was, in order to become human. The question then is, aren't we all human beings already? And the answer was, not all of us make it. So what is that pesky tale? A woman's verse on this koan is passing through, filling a ditch, turning beyond, all is lost. This tiny tale, what a wonderful thing it is. To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be confirmed by the myriad things. To be confirmed by the myriad things is to cast off body and mind of the self, as well as those of others. No trace of realization remains, and this no trace continues endlessly.

[29:07]

If that is true, then what is the tale for you? To encourage us, Robert Aikin says, when you look upside down, look at the tale from that point of view. Having exited the window, the part that is missing in, to discern it clearly, is to see the reality of our lives and oneself with bare awareness, just for what it is. Now in this moment, as best we can, as far as we can see into our experience, right now, of course, that's an endless process, isn't it? So I say we practice to become full humans, and some of us, if we keep up with it, make it. I asked Ron Nestor, who's been working on the autobiography, now biography, that Sojin Roshi

[30:12]

was making up until he died, what he thought some of Sojin's pivotal teachings were. And some of them seem to focus on not giving up, just to practice harder. It's continuous, don't give up. And he said that that practice is like a long Japanese noodle, you know, the kind that you slurp, that never ends. Noodles in Japanese style. And it's tastier and tastier and tastier. Don't give up, keep slurping up your life. Let me be just a little bit more here. So does a spiritual path involve finding the correct story, or getting rid of stories, or learning stories in a new way? Maybe it doesn't matter. The tale will flick itself back and forth

[31:17]

to the circumstance. So thank you very much for your attention. I didn't get to click through and see if anyone on the other screens have fallen asleep. But thank you very much for your attention and allowing me to prepare and share this talk with you. Before we open it up, Mary Beth has sent me some questions. I think we have a couple of, we have a little bit of time for that. But before I do that, I wanted to ask Hoson Sensei if he wanted to add a turning word to this talk. Thank you. Thank you for the talk. And I think it's good to remember that this is the Year of the Ox. I believe. I believe the Year of the Ox has just begun. Is that is that right? That's right. Yes. The Metal Ox. Yes. Anyway, to touch on one point, you spoke about Zazen instruction.

[32:19]

And for the last number of years, I have added something to my Zazen instruction and the instruction I give myself every time I sit down, which is the simple raising of Bodhicitta. So it's not just creating this open receptivity, but I say to myself, may I be awake that others may awake. And so in the may I be awake, in both parts of that sentence, um, there's a piece of a story. You know, what does it mean to be awake? Which I, which I'm constantly curious about. And what would it mean for all of us to awaken

[33:24]

together? All of those are, those are parts of the visions and stories that we have. But I do think it's, it's really good to add that little piece to your Zazen instruction at the beginning, because it gives, it gives us a way of, of practicing and, and looking, even though it's goldless, looking at the functioning of Zazen, which is awakening. Thank you very much for that. I really appreciate you adding that. I'll say tried and true. It's been an important part of my practice from the beginning to bring a question like that. Thank you. So it's time for Q and A. Raise your digital hand. I think most of you through the reactions

[34:24]

button and send a message. I will call on you. Thank you. Susan Marvin, you can unmute yourself. Thanks for your talk, Andrea. It's really thought provoking. What came up for me over and over throughout your talk, and especially at the end, when you talked about Sojin saying, don't ever give up, is our faith in the long view. And as you talked about stories and you talked about, you know, the ideas, the fixed ideas we have about ourselves, seems like that faith, you know, developing that faith in the long view is what opens up possibility in our lives.

[35:27]

And also that faith in the long view kind of, to me means like, don't ever give up on anyone, you know, like, and the story you told of the patient, Daniel, is a kind of fine example of that. But it could be anyone, you know, we just we just never know, right up until the last moment, what possibility may emerge. Thank you very much. I really appreciate your comment. And don't give up and trust in what you don't know. Meaning that there's so much the effects of karma and the effects of how we came to this moment are so noble. We don't know what shifts or how knots get unpulled. We can't go there in a straight line. We can't look for it exactly, although we can we can practice. Thanks so much. Thank you. Sue Oser, would you like to unmute yourself, please?

[36:34]

Thank you. Dragon Hearts. So wonderful to hear your talk. Thank you. Thank you. Um, you used a phrase that struck me out of all the many phrases. Because I just started looking at it. Can you tell me what it means to have a relationship with yourself? Well, how do you have a relationship with someone else? I pay attention. I get I let go of my snarky comments and opinions before I say them. And try and understand that person. Yeah. Oh, silly me. And if you're if you're friends with them, you accept them.

[37:37]

Probably, no matter what, you may not always agree with them. You may have some things that you need to work out. But you you're willing to meet them completely. Be willing to meet yourself completely with the same kind of openness and curiosity, enjoyment, and care that you do to your friends. I'm still working on that one. Thank you. Thank you. Gary Arden, would you please unmute yourself? Hi, Andrea. Hey, Gary, it's great to see you. Good to see you. Um, I wonder how your Tassajara and your dog event worked out. I don't think you really said. Oh, like, did Ananda do okay?

[38:39]

Yeah. And, oh, okay. I'll let you speak. Go ahead. Is that what you're asking? And did you go to Tassajara? I did go to Tassajara. And it turned out that someone who used to sit at BCC, Rosie Siskun, appeared at the last minute and stayed at my home. And Ananda couldn't have been happier. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks for asking. Peter Overton, would you unmute yourself, please? Andrea, thank you very much for your talk. I was especially taken with the parts where you described and actually showed us how to relate to the constantly emerging experience, which is the sort of stuff of our lives. And then later in the talk, I thought,

[39:43]

oh, that's where the tail is. Oh, how nice it is to sort of know that I cannot deal with this, but I can be with it. I can hang out with it. You need the tail. Yes. You need the tail. Without the tail, where does our connection with being human come from? Yeah. Isn't it wonderful? Isn't it wonderful? And isn't it wonderful not to know exactly what that tail is? Right. It's just a source of something wonderful. Who knows? That's right. Thank you. Yeah. The tail is part of why I love you. Okay. Heather Cerantes, would you unmute yourself, please? Hi, Andrea. Hey, Heather. Wherever you are. Right here. There. Great. Hi.

[40:45]

Thank you so much. This was such a beautiful talk. I have a reflection and I just wonder if you have any thoughts to further the reflection, but I love this inquiry around stories and what they mean for our lives and where they catch us and where they propel us. And I've been exploring the way that stories live between people as opposed to just to myself. So for example, my best friend died five years ago. And I feel like the vast majority of my stories evaporated when she died. And some of them I can't remember as well as I used to, or maybe not at all. And some of them, if I told them to you or to someone else, wouldn't be the same story as if I were sharing

[41:45]

or reliving that story with her. So I'm interested in stories, words and narratives, but there's so much more than that. There's a certain magic and alchemical factor to it. So I wonder if you have anything to say in that regard. What came up for me is a quote from Rilke. A true friend is the protector of our solitude. The solitude are those deep stories, like what we're really about somehow. Some people are true friends really seen in a way that other people don't. So the story is still there, but it's not revealed by the love and the attention of someone else to it. So perhaps that's your own turning towards and exploration and opening to those places again.

[42:49]

Wonderful. Thank you. Yeah. Jeff Taylor, would you please unmute yourself and ask your question? Thanks so much for a great talk, Andrea. It called so many things for me very nicely. And I wasn't quite sure where I wanted my calm to settle, but it's sort of like this. Practice has changed the way that I relate to my story. It's changed the way that I tell my story. My story has become a jewel that turns and I'll tell it one way one day and I'll tell it differently another day. And letting that shift and letting that move is part of the liberation that practice has given me. I ran across, I was cleaning out and I ran across some journaling I had done years ago. And I was horrified. I was horrified as I looked at that person who was telling that story in that way at that time. And I rushed to destroy it. I rushed to get rid of it because it was anchoring

[43:56]

a person that doesn't exist anymore. It was tying me to a person that had existed at that point in time that isn't here anymore. In a way, Jeff, I want to say too bad. In a way, I want to say that because it's a problem to throw away any part of ourself without having, it goes away on its own. It doesn't need to be thrown away. It finds its proper place in our life on its own. That's right. And that's why I got rid of the writing, right? That's why I moved to get rid of it because it was an anchor to a different place in a different time in a different self. I appreciate what you're saying. I'm responding to the emotional reaction. It's a familiar one, but I'm responding to the emotional reaction. It was, oh my God, I wasn't that way. No, I was that way. I'm not anymore.

[44:59]

Anyway, so there's another phrase that comes up for me. And I'm not quite sure how this relates, but it's the student enters the mountain and the student disappears when the mountain wakes up. That's a moment by moment thing. And when I think about the idea of no before and no after, that also gives me freedom to relate to my story in a number of different ways. Some days it's a relationship and an understanding of difficulty. Some days it's an enormous gratitude. And all of these things are true. All of them at the same time, right? And so that's kind of what you called forth for me and talking about. And when you told Daniel's story, I found it so poignant because what it called up for me was this arising of today my story sounds different. Today my story is a story of gratitude and of hope and of great liberation. It's such a gift to have that freedom, Jeff. Thank you.

[46:02]

No, thank you. We have two more questioners. Do you want to take them or close to the end here? I'd love if it's all right with you, Susheen director. I'm always interested in what people have to say out of their own experience or contributions. Linda Hess, please unmute yourself and ask a question. Good morning. Hey, Linda. What Heather said made me think of this. One of my favorite little bits of a Zen story is where the monk Ananda who was probably the earlier incarnation of your dog, Ananda. He says to the Buddha, I just realized this. He said, friendship is half of the holy life, right? Most of you know this story. And then the Buddha says, don't say that, Ananda. Do not say

[47:08]

that, please. Friendship is the whole, all of the holy life. And I always really liked that. When Heather was, not only liked it, I love it. I dive into it. And when Heather raised, when you raised what you did, Heather, I just thought that actually the stories that happened in relationship with others are more dynamic and alive and more a doorway to something deep, maybe, or sometimes, than stories that we're just in the habit of telling ourselves over and over and over again. If they're isolated in us, then they can get sort of fossilized. Anyway, I just wanted to say those stories in relationship, really a deep portal. Thank you so much for that. I really appreciate that. I think in relationship, something alive and catalytic can happen in a way that we can't

[48:13]

do it on our own. Three ingredients, making something happen. Sue Moon, please unmute yourself and ask a question. Thank you, Andrea, for your multi-layered talk, so many elements in it. And thank you, Linda, for that idea, too, and how stories are about relationship, too, just adding that thought. You can't really have a very good story if there's only one person in it. You can, but it's kind of thin. Anyway, so I just had a question about, I absolutely loved the way you brought Mel into your talk and wove his teachings in so beautifully. And particularly, I'm thinking about don't give up, makes me also think, well, sometimes it's appropriate to give up,

[49:13]

in the sense of letting go. Or sometimes, you know, I might stubbornly be trying to make something happen that's not going to happen. And I can't give up the idea that I'm going to make X happen, or have a certain, my cousin who hasn't spoken to me for three years is going to finally call me back if I keep sending him the right message. Or sometimes I just don't give up when I should give up. How do you know when? Well, I think what Suzuki Roshi and Sojin were saying is a different kind of not giving up. Yeah. Don't give up on practice. Practice, it makes sense. It answers the question. Yeah. Yeah. Don't, don't think that nothing is happening. Just because, just because, was it your brother, just because this person, your cousin, just because someone is, is

[50:16]

something's not moving with a person or within yourself doesn't mean that it won't. Yeah. Just give up means keep doing your practice. Keep listening to yourself in the situation. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you. And don't give up on yourself or on the other person either. But yeah. Yeah. It's the big life. Just trust in the big life and keep practicing. Thank you. Thank you so much for the talk. Yeah. Thank you, Sue. Thanks for

[50:47]

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