Those words. Good morning, everyone. Yes, we pee. For the offering at my altar behind me that you... Most of you saw. I do nine bowels. I bow three times to the Buddha image, which is right above my head. I bow to my parents. There. And then I bow to my Dharma teachers, Bernie and Sojin or. That's again, and no. we stand on the shoulders of giants, as the saying goes.

[01:05]

It's been purported to say that Suzuki Roshi said that I have to spend a long time on preparing my lectures because English is not my first language. And this morning when I was preparing, while I was preparing for this talk, I realized that English is not my first language either. It's the only language that I have to share my thoughts and feelings with you. But it's not my first language. It's actually not any of our first languages. Our first language is experience. And the manifestation of those experiences are brought out by talking and speaking. So I hope that today's talk is clear and helpful and encouraging to you all.

[02:17]

And I invite you to ask questions of me, of Hozan Sensei or Abbott here at Berkeley Zen Center, and the Sangha, the teachers that are here practicing and people who are yet to be formal teachers who are practicing here, because everyone has their own experience that can be shared and expressed and helpful to others. Today is my day to share with you. Today I want to talk about Buddha nature. It's a word that is often spoken about, but it's hard to understand or grasp. Simply put, it's a capacity to become a Buddha, to become awake.

[03:27]

In fact, it's our birthright. We're born with it. There's an expression, nature or nurture? Is it nature that's driving or is it nurture that's driving? So I'd like us to think about nurturing our nature, nurturing our Buddha nature. I believe that's what we do here on the cushion. And in our practice, we're nurturing this nature of Buddha to come forth. We don't get Buddha nature. We don't have Buddha nature. We are Buddha nature. In the first couple centuries of the last millennium, there was a sutra called the Maha Parinirvana Sutra, and in it there's a description of a being called an enchantaka.

[04:50]

An enchantaka is someone who will never attain Buddhahood, or doesn't wish to become a Buddha. Some years later, There were remnants of this sutra that were found in a cave, presumably. And they read that all beings have Buddha nature. It's a little different. Either don't we have, or do we have? I think most importantly, this speaks to... the tenets of Buddhism, which didn't come down from a mountain in tablet form carried by an old man with a beard. Okay, kitty cat. The practice comes to us from our experience and shared experience and unpacking that experience and exploring and understanding what it means to be Buddha.

[06:03]

So it's a living dynamic practice. It's not something old that we're just kind of parenting. So the original authors of this Mahapara Nirvana Sutra originally were focused on stupa worship. Stupas are these burial mounts that you will come across in East Asia India and such. And there's a veneration for these spaces, these places, holy places, not to enlighten, in our country, going to a graveyard. Looking back out here, outside my apartment, the memorial garden. They're not stupid as in mounds, but they're the relics of the ancestors that came before us. Some of us had the privilege to practice with these ancestors in this lifetime.

[07:08]

So these early compilers of the sutra were focused on the external, focusing on the relics and stupas of the ancestors. And then at some point, their orientation and thinking started turning inward. to the Buddha inside of us, the Buddha that's in here, not out there. There's a Buddhist term called Tathagatagarbha, which translates as womb or hidden treasury within. So that's our Buddha nature. to Takata Garba, Buddha nature. So we've gone from some beings don't have Buddha nature to all beings have Buddha nature.

[08:21]

And then in the 13th century in Japan, Dogen Zenji said, all beings are Buddha nature, which is quite a shift of thinking. So it's not something you have, it's something that you are, that you embody. You don't have to get it, but only to realize it. So having it or not having, this is the point. And I know from my own experience that if I lose faith in having Buddha nature or questioning another's ability to manifest Buddha, thinking they don't have Buddha nature, this is one source of discomfort and suffering.

[09:36]

I believe that Suzuki Roshi encouraged his students to think of others as Buddha to undercut this tendency that we can judge others or judge ourselves as not having Buddha nature. So we start seeing others as Buddha are thinking about them. changes and are thinking about us changes, ourselves. So he would say, you're okay as you are, and you can use some improvement. So Suzuki Rishi was encouraging us to see that we're okay as we are, that we are Buddha. And as important is, you can use some improvement. However, needing or using some improvement does not mean that you're less of a Buddha.

[10:54]

It just means you can refine your life a bit. You can be reminded of things and improve, so to speak. The key to that is that in the moment of practice and so-called improving, you are Buddha manifesting in that moment. We're not practicing to become Buddha. We're Buddha in this moment. You know, the Buddha did not want depictions of him after he died because... Well, why? Why wasn't there? But I'm imagining that he didn't want to be idealized. So... for some years after his death, there were no images of him. And slowly people began wanting some orientation or reference to the Buddha's teaching. And so they started creating images.

[11:58]

Some of them were not anthropomorphic. There was a deer, the Dharma wheel, footprints. But eventually images started coming. into focus and being made and propagated. So with those images came an image of this man sitting upright in a particular posture with a petific smile on his face. Something like that. Apparently calm and at ease. And that's something that we tend to want in our lives, calmness and easefulness. So what happens when we don't have calm or ease? What happens when we don't look like that? Either by virtue of skin color, by gender, by comportment.

[13:02]

Are we still Buddha? So the images that we have on our altars or in our mind are ideals and something to orient toward. But ultimately we have to find the Buddha in here and accept the Buddha that's in there. I heard a story of a student speaking with Sojin Roshi, and Sojin asked him, how are you doing? And he said, wobbly. We've all felt wobbly at times. So Sojin simply responded, wobbly Buddha. Except for wobble.

[14:07]

and be Buddha. Dogen Zenji has a fascicle in Shobo Genzo called Busho, which is translated as Buddha Nature, and it opens thus. Shakyamuni Buddha said, Living beings all are Buddha nature. The Tathagata is continuously abiding and not subject to change. Tathagata is another name for the Buddha, or the thus come, thus gone one. So what is it that thus comes and thus goes? That's the essence. It's the essence that is inside that doesn't change.

[15:08]

The phenomenal changes, but the essence doesn't change. At our ordination ceremony here at Berkley Zen Center, it opens Invoking the presence and compassion of our ancestors in faith that we are Buddha, we enter Buddha's way. So this brings up the... Okay, kitty cat. I know. This brings up the topic of faith. And everything exists because of an opposite. So it also brings up doubt. Do we have faith that we are Buddha, or do we doubt that we are Buddha? So people tend to fall on one side or the other of this line, being either faith types or doubt types.

[16:23]

It's okay to have doubt and to question, but if it falls into skeptical doubt and cynicism, then we don't get very far in our practice. It's good to have faith and optimism and a belief, but if we have too much faith, we can be naive and not question things. So what's the balance between the faith and the doubt? We can become very arrogant and cocky if we have experiences that seem to be uplifting and validating of, oh yeah, I'm a Buddha. We can be very downtrodden and not so upright when we've had experiences that have either physically or emotionally beaten us down. And they live in our body. And in our practice,

[17:26]

we are able to see these causes and conditions and temper them and have equanimity for ourselves and for others. From time to time, I make a mistake And once I was in Sojin's office, and I forgot what the mistake was, and I apologized, and he just said, don't apologize, just do better. And I thought about that. You know, apologies are useful tools to acknowledge our mistakes. to ourselves and, more importantly, to others, as well as to express or manifest humbleness.

[18:36]

When we're humble, we're more open and receptive, and we grow with that. So it's okay to apologize, and with it, keep going forward. A little later on in Bouchot, Dogen writes, The Buddha said, if you want to understand Buddha nature, you should intimately observe cause and effect over time. When the time is right, Buddha nature manifests. The sixth ancestor said, impermanence itself is Buddha nature.

[19:46]

So these two sayings, or teachers, what they said, go together. So cause and effect is volitional action, things that we intend to do, either through body, speech, and mind, and they manifest. And because these actions are continually unfolding, we see impermanence. Nothing is fixed or stable to its cause and effect. So what is it like? So Buddha-nature, I want to see Buddha-nature study cause and effect.

[20:53]

Well, the other day I heard a talk and there was a reference to an exchange between a student and a teacher in the Sufi tradition. The student asked the teacher, what is wisdom? Teacher responds, wisdom comes from making good choices. Well, how do you make good choices? Teacher says, from experience. Well, how do you gain experience making bad choices? So... Buddha nature is revealed by seeing the choices that we make and the cause and conditions that precipitated them.

[21:59]

This has been really helpful for me to understand this subject because making so-called good choices gives me a feeling of uprightness and support in practice. And if I make so-called bad choices, the, oh, what a schmuck, so stupid, that doesn't have the same feeling of uprightness in being Buddha. it seems very far away from being Buddha. But if I look closely and learn about the so-called mistake I've made and continue to make, and learning from that, the costs and conditions that will unfold will be different.

[23:11]

it takes a long time to turn our karma of making poor choices into more wholesome choices. So I think it's continuous practice. Ruots are collections of stories from Tang and Song China, another place in time, another culture and people. But they really are stories about us, about you and me. And it's important to remember that the players in these stories on this stage are you and me.

[24:18]

They have other names, but they're you and me. In case two of the Mumankan, Hakujo's Fox, I won't comment on the whole koan, but the gist of the story is that the former abbot of a temple, was reborn as a fox because he gave a mistaken answer when asked, is an enlightened person subject to cause and effect? He said no. And he was reborn as a fox. And in the culture over there, foxes are considered crafty, being possessed maybe, tricky, something of the occult, nothing that's particularly something that we would want to have in us.

[25:29]

But he was reborn as a fox for 500 lifetimes by saying that enlightened person is not subject to cause and effect. And this fox spirit, as they... President Abbot of the same temple that he had been at long before, please give me a turning word so I can understand what this teaching is about and let go of this fox spirit that I've been inhabiting. And the teacher asks him, well, ask me the question. He says, does an enlightened person is an enlightened person subject to cause and effect? And the teacher said, the abbot said, an enlightened person does not ignore cause and effect. So here's a thousand-year-old story that speaks to us today.

[26:35]

Not ignoring cause and effect. We see the effects of our life, we can look and examine them more closely and see, well, what are the causes and conditions that prompted that effect? It's impossible to know all the causes and conditions, but we can hone in on some of them, some of the more obvious ones. In Case 9 of the Mubankan, Daitsu Chiso's Nanatein Buddha speaks to, I think, many of our laments. I've been sitting so long, why can't I wake up? I feel so deluded. I've been sitting for 40 years, and I'm ordained, and I still make these mistakes. Why can't I turn this around?

[27:43]

So here's the case. A monk asked the priest Daitsu Chiso, the Buddha of supremely pervading, surpassing wisdom did zazen on the Bodhi seat for ten kalpas, but the Dharma of the Buddha did not manifest itself, and he could not attain Buddhahood. Why was this? Daitsu Chiso said, Your question is exactly to the point. The monk said, but he did sazen on the Bodhi seat. Why couldn't he attain Buddhahood? Daitsu Chiso said, because he is a non-attained Buddha. So when I first came across this koan years ago, I thought, well, okay, he just didn't get it. He didn't attain it. And then in subsequent study, realizing that we don't attain anything and we are it, my thinking shifted around this.

[28:56]

My shifting shifted from that the Buddha didn't manifest because it's not something that's born, it's something that's already there and present. And as I read earlier, the Jatagata is continuously abiding and not subject to change. So there's no birth and there's no death, it's just what is. That's the essence that we get caught in the phenomenal of duality. I have it or I don't have it. and you can't attain what you already have. This speaks to Dogen's teaching of practice enlightenment.

[30:07]

We don't practice to get enlightenment. We practice because we are enlightened already. So a kalpa is an incalculable amount of time. It's thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years. That's one kalpa. So 10 kalpas is even longer. So someone sitting for a very long time, be it 10 kalpas, be it 10 minutes, It's all the same. Because the ten doesn't refer to time. It refers to practice. It's actually a reference to the ten paramitas.

[31:10]

We typically talk about the paramitas or perfection of practices as six. and ways of perfecting ourselves, so to speak. The six paramitas that people are most familiar with are generosity, morality, patience, zeal, meditation, and wisdom. So the prashnaparamita is a paramita of wisdom. Dhanaparamita is a paramita of generosity. So we practice these expressions in order to cross over to the other shore, which is this shore. The other four paramitas that are on this list of ten are conduct and speech appropriate to the truth, resolve or will, strength, and spiritual knowledge.

[32:19]

So we're practicing for kalpas, however long that is, on the cushion and off the cushion of these ten paramitas. The thrust of the koan is an encouragement to get off the cushion and practice those paramitas. And in that practice we attain so-called realization that we are Buddha. I'd like to end with a little Sharing of Suzuki Roshi from an old wind bell that speaks to this.

[33:43]

My mind was wandering about. I couldn't make my mind pure and I was at a loss for what to do. I suffered a little bit and I thought and thought and thought about what I should do. One day, when I was listening to a psychology lecture, the teacher said, it is impossible to catch our mind exactly. It is especially impossible to know exactly what we have done. The mind which acted some time ago, the mind which belongs to the past, is impossible to catch. And even the mind... which is acting right now is impossible to catch. So I thought, no wonder it is so difficult for me to understand my mind. And I gave up trying to be sure of my way-seeking mind.

[34:51]

Since then, I have done things without thinking that I did them just because they were good. So when you want to see or be sure of your mind, you should realize that you cannot catch it. But when you just do something and your mind is acting as it is, that is how you catch your mind in the true sense. In other words, practice enlightenment, practicing waking up, mind and body merged. Anyway, it is rather difficult to see things as it is. It's because seeing things as it is is not the activity of our sight or our eyes. This is why we put emphasis on practice.

[35:55]

To do something without thinking is the most important point in understanding ourselves. Since it is difficult to see things as it is, we should just practice our way. Thank you, Suzuki Roshi. And thank you, you all. If you have any questions or comments, I would invite you to ask them. And I'd also like to take a moment to encourage you to converse and study together by reaching out to Hozan Sensei, our abbot here at Berkeley Zen Center, any of the speakers who come on Saturday for lecture, they've all been vetted, as well as the Sangha members who we practice with

[37:10]

a little hard online. It's not like being in the Zendo and on the grounds where we see each other bump into each other, and then we can share our thoughts and ideas around practice and encourage each other. But if you want to do that, you'll find a way, I'm sure. Because in order for the teachings to come alive and to transform us, they have to be engaged. And there's engagement alone. and there's engagement and community. So as I said earlier, we stand on the shoulders of giants. And a little Sweet Pea, the little cat that some of you saw maybe on the screen here when she was walking around me, she doesn't appear to be a giant, but I learned a lot from her. Because when I look at her, I recall the cause and conditions of my life

[38:11]

that either have expressed impatience with her or love for her, and the numerous other feelings that come up when we're around others. And I practice with that, and so she's a really good teacher for me. Thank you. Thank you, Ross, for your talk and inspiration. We have questions now. We'll start with Peter Felser. Would you unmute and ask your question? Good morning, Ross. I want to, you know, you use the term and I run into it regularly. in my years of practice cause and effect cause and conditions for me those are those are very esoteric concepts and um i feel like i have little if any uh real mastery of the of understanding let's forget about mastery just understanding those terms

[39:37]

how they affect me, how to practice with them. Would you be willing to give me an answer to that question, those questions? Well, I'll give you a response. I'll move on there. Because... of your smile, the effect of warmth fills my heart. Does that help? Could you repeat this sort of middle phrase? I said, I heard because. Because of your smile. The effect warms my heart.

[40:39]

I'll have to ponder that a bit cross. It still seems, I don't know whether it's my engineering mind or not, but you know, that's, that's still seems esoteric. Okay. Um, I'm observing a knitted brow on you, trying to understand me. I'm familiar with that knitted brow because I knit my brow myself when I don't understand things. The things aren't clicking for me. So there's two people here. There's infinite numbers of people here, but now there's just two people here having a conversation. And the cause and effect of each, we affect causes and cause effects back and forth endlessly.

[41:54]

Let's go for a walk and explore this. I would like... Okay, thank you, Peter. We have a question from Linda. Go ahead, Linda. Hi, good morning, Ross and everybody. Good morning. Ross, I can really involve a deep worry when you say that the target does not change. What are you talking about? Something does not change. Please help. If we forget the essence, we get caught in the phenomenal.

[42:59]

I don't know about the essence. I thought phenomenal, you know, this thing that I'm doing with my hands, it's very hard to do it better than that. But, you know, I thought form and emptiness and emptiness and form, and you can't talk about one without the other. That's right. So we make a mistake talking about them. And that's why Suzuki Roshi said, just sit. But the bell rings, and then we start talking about it. Do you really experience that something doesn't change? I don't, but in the moment it doesn't. When we look at it, we start examining it, and we see changes. But in this moment, there's no change. In this moment, there's no change. So the so-called moment in two months ago and the moment now where there's all these changes that are taking.

[44:11]

But the only thing that is real that I have in this moment. Ross, maybe it's meaningful. If you were giving me that response, I got a message that my Internet is unstable and it got garbled. So. Did it get to talk to go garbled? Anyway, Ross, this is a very serious matter for me. Sorry to be serious with you. I understand it's a serious matter for you. It's a serious matter for me as well. And I can't explain it. And I'm not trying to be fancy. or condescending, I am helpless in explaining it, in trying to explain it to you. And... We'll continue to stand on the shoulders of sweet pea.

[45:22]

I will, but I had a thought, you know, I was speaking with Sojin some time ago about some heartbreak. And he said, well, now you get to practice alone. For me, that was a step into the essence. If it was a step into the ever-changing phenomenal, then he would have been talking to me about all the things I could or couldn't do to feel happier, to get through my Mishagats. But practicing alone is... What I got from that is practice in stillness. Practice in the place that doesn't change. Because getting caught in the world of change was causing me a great deal of suffering. And it continues to, because I get caught.

[46:22]

And if I forget about the essence, the Tathagata Garba, that doesn't change, then... I lose faith, and then I go into doubt. Okay, thank you, Ross. These are heartfelt matters for you and for me. Yes, let's talk about them again sometime. Thank you. Thank you, Linda and Ross. We have a question from Ron. Go ahead, Ron. Yo, Bootsu. Hi, Ross. In the fascicle on Buddha nature, Busho, that you mentioned from Dogen, which I've been able to make my way partway through, but give up usually. There's a whole section where he, when he mentions Buddha nature, he says Mu Buddha nature.

[47:25]

He goes on for page after page saying Mu Buddha nature. He won't say one without the other. What do you make out of that? Moo. No, I mean for real. That was real. And Moo, which for those who have studied Joshu's dog, does a dog have Buddha nature? Moo literally means no. We all know that the dog does have Buddha nature. So no is taking away our concepts, revealing yes, that all is accepted, all is included. So I make out of that, that Buddha nature is thus. Is thus?

[48:27]

Is thus. What do you mean by thus? All is included. Okay. All is included. And if we talk about it, then we get into discrimination, which is okay. It's important to discriminate and discern. And then we find where things line up. Who has deeper Buddha nature or realization. who's higher up and who's lower down, what's right, what's wrong and all of that. So it's an ongoing practice for 10 Kalpas. Do you think it's possible to talk without falling into that bias? Yeah, I sincerely believe Joshu's response, Mu, doesn't.

[49:31]

So Dogen can talk about it. Well, he did talk about it. Sojin talked about it. As Suzuki Roshi said, and Sojin reminded us, don't take things literally. You have to look in between the lines, or I think Suzuki Roshi said, you have to read the other side of the page. Because the page is empty. and has words. We focus on the words. But our practice and our conditioning is focusing on words. That's what we grow up with. But if we orient and bring in the other side of the page, the empty side of the page, then we get a broader picture. Okay, let's do it.

[50:37]

Thank you, Ron. Susan Marvin, go ahead, please. Hi, Ross. So, listening to you and Linda, here's where I went. What I really liked in the Dogen reading are those words... continuously abiding, which somehow... When Suzuki Roshi said, you also need a little improvement, I'm guessing there was a little translation problem there, because I think in Japanese that word improvement really includes this idea of continuously, and I think what he might have been meaning was more like... continuously abiding because it's tricky in english for us that word improvement has some attachment to a goal or to becoming better or it even includes in the dictionary it has this idea better than which is um you know that's the wrong direction for us as zen students and so and so then when we think about the word change

[51:59]

Change is fine, but it's not final. There's included in change is this idea that we're always in the same place and we have to continually abide in this place that brings the kind of wholesome activity you're talking about. And I wonder if you could say something about that. Well, I'm really glad that you brought that up. It speaks to my opening words about English not being or my own. I really appreciate everybody's questions and challenging in a good way, challenging me so we can kind of unpack this. When I asked Sojin that question at public Dokusan some months ago, I said, what's your take on me?

[53:00]

He said, well, you're okay as you are. Any lab decision, you can use some improvement. But improvement is not like a self-improvement program. It's like improving by being reminded and working on this continuous practice. We do have to continually abide. And that is the vow of that we take when we're ordained. You know, even after enlightenment, will you continue to practice? Yes, I will. So it's a continual practice and continuing to abide. The dude abides from that Coen Brothers movie, The Big Lebowski. And so I think It's hard for us to understand abiding.

[54:02]

We understand improvement. And I think that's where we can get caught also because we start beating ourselves up that we have to improve more and do better and do better. When in fact, what is it that is with us during the improving process? It's abiding. Buddha nature is abiding while we are so-called improving. Yeah. Well, and it includes a lot of repetition. So really, when we abide, we do improve, but we should just not be attached to it as a fixed point. Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. We have another question from Kabir. Go ahead, Kabir. Hello. Thank you for the great talk.

[55:03]

Thank you. While back, Sojan Roshi talked about our human nature and then Buddha nature. So how one can find balance between the two? If you have faith in Buddha, if you have faith in your own Buddha nature, your human nature will take care of itself. If you don't have faith in your Buddha nature, it will be very difficult. Dogen said that the rock that you trip on is the same rock that you get up off the earth and continue on in your life and practice.

[56:10]

So is it the human that trips or is it the Buddha that trips? This is really important. like Sojin told this student, wobbly Buddha. Wow, I tripped. Buddha tripped. I'm crying, I'm so sad. Buddha cries. What do you think? I like that. It's funny that falling... I heard it first time years ago from a Tibetan nun. And the person who said it has changed, but the message is very powerful. And I really appreciate that.

[57:15]

Thank you. Also, when Linda was asking about the no change or what have you, I heard Alan Watts talk about something like that. It said, the unshakable shaker. So is that the witnessing eye or the emptiness of it that sort of doesn't really change but changes everything around it? I'm not sure. So that came to my mind when that was asked. One of the things that I discovered in my study of this is that there's many different ways of saying the same thing. And there's no right way. It's just the way that happens. you know, click for us and help us, those tend to be the ones that we remember. It's not one and it's not two.

[58:15]

If we get attached to one, we just become bumps on a log. When the bell rings, we have an opportunity to go from so-called oneness or essence, to duality. But if it becomes a mechanical thing where, okay, now I'm going to go sit and become one, and now I'm going to go out and take care of my kids, that's going to be duality. In order for the practice to actually transform us, there's a transformation that the one becomes many, and the many becomes one. So... Cutting a carrot, the classic story. I'm cutting my carrot. I've got to be careful not to cut my finger. And at some point, it's just emerging. It's still being cut, but there's an experience of the essence also.

[59:18]

And if we step back and start examining it, the soup won't get made. So we just continue practicing cutting. and know that when you take up one corner, the rest of the cloth comes with it. You just can't take one corner. You know, when these teachers were coming over to bring Buddhism to America, people were looking for experiences. and practicing samadhi and all these sort of special states of mind, it's much harder to just have an ordinary state of mind and see the extraordinariness of that. It's kind of boring, but it's transformative in a really curious way because we get to look at

[60:24]

the cause and conditions of our life that have moved us along and continue to move us along. Really important to look at that. It's not just about having special transcendent experiences. So going back to the ordinary mind. Thank you, Kabir. Ross, if we have time, we have one more question from Yoni. Yoni, go ahead. Thank you, Kabir. Sorry. Thank you. Thanks for your talk. Something early on in your talk had an effect on me when you were telling, mentioned how Sojin said, don't apologize, do better. And to me, the apology seems important because it expresses a shared reality. And that's sort of the importance of language in a lot of sentences.

[61:29]

It allows us to share reality. You talking with Ron about the word moo, it seemed like this is a word where we had a hard time sharing our experience of the word moo. And I wonder why that is. Why is it so hard to agree on Mu? Well, thank you, Yoni. To your first point, I agree. Apologies are important. I think some people apologize too much and beat themselves up for it. And it's possible that Sojin has been kind of conditioned around that and trying to get people not to do that so much. That's the thought that I have. With the shoe on the other foot, I would go into Soja's office and talk about my cooking with him, a meal during retreats.

[62:33]

And he would start being apologetic when he criticized something that I cooked. And I said, you don't have to apologize. I'm here to learn and we're having a conversation. But he felt bad because he has criticized people in the past and they reacted. And so that kind of drove them apart. So how do we get intimate? How do we practice intimacy with our apologies? And that's allowing and making room for people to apologize. So it's a good point. As far as Mu, the experience I had with my first teacher, Tessigan, Bernie Glassman in New York, this was a koan that I worked on with him. And I had the experience that we talk about of this oneness and all-inclusivity there.

[63:39]

And this happens privately. It's ordinary and it's extraordinary. We don't talk about enlightenment experiences and waking up, but it's just one of those moments. But then, you know, he rings the bell, and then I've got to go out and manifest that in my day. And I didn't do so well. And then I would do well. And then I didn't do so well. And it was continuous practice, ongoing. But having the experience of, does the dog have Buddha nature, moo, cannot be shared by anybody else but the two interlocutors in the conversation. So, as the saying goes, there is, I didn't say there's no Zen teacher, I'm sorry, I didn't say there's no Zen, there's just no Zen teacher, because we actually are learning

[64:41]

for ourselves something that's already there. So it's often said that students will either come back to their teacher thanking them for not telling me the answer so I can figure it out for myself. And sometimes we do memorial services and remembrance of services for people who shared something with us, but didn't reveal the secret, that we actually find the secret ourself. And that's this continuous practice. It can be frustrating, but that's why we continue to practice together, because we get little glimpses. Thank you, Ross. And everyone, this is the conclusion of our talk today. We will, Ross can lead us now in our four vows.

[65:44]

We can mute or unmute ourselves. I'm not sure what's the protocol here. I bow to awaken with them. Illusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates. I vow to end them. Buddha's ways. I vow to be coming.

[66:22]

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