Thank you again, Jerry. Actually, I was Hussou at CCLA, not through Thich Nhat Hanh, but he certainly was my lead into Buddhist practice and my art teacher for a long time. So good morning. Hozan, in a talk that he gave a few weeks ago, started his talk by greeting us saying good morning bodhisattvas and I can hardly say how happy it made me to hear it because in my first practice center there was a sensei who began each of his evening talks greeting us by saying good evening bodhisattvas and it was always a reminder To me, a reflection kind of of our practice and our vow to live into bodhisattva-ness.

[01:18]

So this morning, as I greet each of us in our jewel boxes, I greet you all good morning, bodhisattvas. So I've been thinking a lot lately about choice, about choosing, how we make choices both consciously and with a full awareness and how we sometimes make choices a little bit underneath the conscious level. And as well, considering the possible long-term effects of the choices that we make, both on ourselves and in our world. Of course, we're making choices pretty much every minute.

[02:21]

I don't know exactly how often we make them, but a lot of times in the day. And we start the morning lying in bed, the alarm goes off, and the first choice may be... Do I want to get up and make coffee and have breakfast? Or would I like to lie here for another half hour? Maybe I'll skip breakfast, have a quick cup of coffee on the way. There's that kind of choice. And then there's some obviously some more significant ones. And as I've been thinking about choice, it seems to me to go to the very heart of how we practice the choices that we are making all along. So the educator and writer, I know he wrote a book and I've forgotten it, something about highly successful people or seven secrets or whatever to highly successful people. But he said this, which I think is useful.

[03:21]

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. And in those choices lie our growth and our happiness. So there are legion articles and theories about the concept of choice and how it works. Actually, 10 years before I started to study as a therapist, William Glasser, who was a psychologist, wrote a book on what he called Choice Theory. And basically he said that in every situation we have a choice. In every situation we have a choice, even if it doesn't feel like a good one.

[04:24]

So right now we're dealing with global warming, we're dealing with climate change accelerating in a scary and rapid way. We're dealing with the Delta virus and all its dreadful fallouts. So we don't have a choice of the existence of these realities. We do have a choice of how we respond into them. And that I think that our good choices can be decisions that we keep making, that keep leading us in the direction we have made perhaps vows to go in. So many years ago, when I was teaching an honors English class to seventh graders, I taught from this story about choice.

[05:32]

written by the French writer Albert Camus, and it was called La Chute, The Fall. Some of you may know it. And in this story, the lead character, Jean-Baptiste Clémence, is a Parisian lawyer, and... One evening, he's taking a stroll across the Seine River on the Pont Royal Bridge, and up on a parapet, way up, he sees a woman clearly contemplating jumping off the parapet. And he stops for a moment, and then he continues walking. And a minute later, he hears a cry, and then he hears a splash in the water.

[06:36]

And the story continues, and in the last scene of the novella, Jean-Baptiste is in a dark bar in Amsterdam, and he's talking to the man or woman on the next barstool, and he's basically saying, that he relives that moment of choice every moment of his life. So this morning I do want to consider choosing. So one of the practices that I cherish at BCC is the Monday morning Wayseeking mind talks. I love to hear each person's story. Always different. Always different. Some people stumble into practice.

[07:42]

Some people are backed up into practice. Some people leap forward into practice, no matter. But the stories are quite wonderful and idiosyncratic. But the commonness, there is a common... thread i think to all of them which is that at some level there's an impulse or a call a pull uh whatever verb we want to speak of here joseph campbell calls names this call a whisper he says we and we have to at some level be ready or willing to hear this whisper this pull amidst the din and cacophony of of world sound and then even with perhaps great doubt or with life circumstances that may temporarily block us that we we find the ways to follow this call

[08:56]

to something that's actually beyond our comprehension or understanding fully, but is very powerful within us. So we have made actually a choice to respond to the call. When I was first thinking about giving this talk, I was sitting at my desk writing down some notes And a song kept coming in my head and kept actually interrupting what I was trying to write down. It got very annoying. And finally, I just gave up and I listened to the words of the song. And the song is Some Enchanted Evening from South Pacific, which was a Broadway musical. And that song was sung by this most wonderful baritone And it's a song about a French planter who lives on some South Sea island, and he's singing about finding his true love.

[10:07]

So I couldn't quite get a hold of why that was interrupting me until I listened to the words sort of from a different way rather than finding one's true love, maybe finding one's whispered call. So let me say the words to you because I just found this fascinating about this inner longing connection with what we call the absolute, but which goes by many names. Some enchanted evening you may see a stranger. You may see a stranger across a crowded room and somehow you know, you know even then. that somewhere you'll see her again and again. Some enchanted evening, someone may be laughing. You may hear them laughing across a crowded room.

[11:10]

And night after night, as strange as it seems, the sound of her laughter will sing in your dreams. Who can explain it? Who can tell you why? Fools give you reasons. Wise men never try. Some enchanted evening, when you find your true love, when you feel her call you across a crowded room, then fly to her side and make her your own. or all through your life, you may dream all alone. Once you have found her, never let her go. Once you have found her, never let her go. So that's from Zen Masters, Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein.

[12:18]

So here's this choice. to follow this heart call. It's a place that many people choose to ignore and turn away from for how many reasons of fear of entering an unknown space, of fear of leaving what's comfortable and what's known, laziness, all many, many things. And some people choose to follow this read to answer this call so to speak the poet William Stafford talks about this in another way he says there is a thread you follow it goes among things that change but it doesn't change

[13:21]

People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread, but it is hard for others to see. When you hold it, you can't get lost. Tragedies happen, people get sick or die, and you suffer and grow old. Nothing you do can stop times unfolding. You don't ever let go of the thread. Well, of course, we do at times let go of the thread. We forget it. We get lazy. We deny it. Or somebody we dearly love dies. leaves us or we suffer a great life disappointment or someone we love or we ourselves endure great chronic go pain and turned away in anger or despair or depression or denial from the thread

[14:52]

The thread is always there at some level of our being, I believe, once we have found it. And surely the thread never lets go of us. And that's good news, I think. So we're called into practice. We choose to listen to this whisper, and we come into practice. And then as we... deepen into practice, we begin to come more face to face with the places where we're challenged in our lives by old patterns, by judgmental thoughts, maybe a pervading, repeating sense of inadequacy. All of us with pretty much without exception bump into our tendency to cling to whatever it is we cling to, thoughts, feelings, even the desire to be enlightened, we hold on to.

[16:01]

We all have that pattern. And we have a comparing mind, a ranking mind often, so we are looking at ourselves and out in the world from rank, from hierarchy and lower-archy, so to speak. So I've been working with a koan for a while now, which has to do with this. I'm going to actually read versions of it because it's an interesting contrast, actually. The first version is from In the Book of Equanimity, case number 38. Attention, Rinzai addressed the assembly saying, there is a true person. no rank he is always leaving and entering the gates of your face you beginners who have not witnessed him look look thereupon a monk asked how about this true man of no rank Rinzai got down from the seat and grabbed him the monk hesitated

[17:21]

And Rinzai pushed him away, saying, this true man of no rank, what a shit stick he is. So that's one version. And this second version is from The Hidden Lamp, which are Zen stories edited by our own Susan Moon and Florence Kaplow. I'm going to just read part of this, the essence of this. The lay woman Yu Dao Po made donuts for a living. She also studied Chan, Chinese Zen, with Master Lang Yi Hui Chui, who told her to contemplate Lin Ji's phrase, the true person of no rank. One day, as she was delivering donuts, she met a beggar who was singing happiness in the lotus land.

[18:25]

Yu was suddenly enlightened and threw her tray of donuts to the ground. There are a number of stories where these donuts wind up on the ground. Yu went to see Langyi, who immediately verified her awakening. One day after this, Langyi asked the assembly, Which one is the two person of no rank? And you shouted out this verse. There is a two person of no rank who has six arms and three heads. When she uses her full strength to cut, Mount Hua is split into two. So, Interesting tonality in these and emphasis, really. Lin Chi lived during the Tang Dynasty in China. Lin Chi is Rinzai in Japan.

[19:29]

And in a nutshell, he was committed to helping people wake up. And sometimes these stories are quite exciting. Hands get cut off and people are shaken and yelled at and sticked. hopefully with the emphasis to get people to wake up. Thich Nhat Hanh says of Rinzai that, and I'm quoting here, Rinzai invented the word a business-less person. Love this word, a business-less person, one who has nothing to do and nowhere to go. So in Mahayana Buddhism, such a person was the Bodhisattva, a compassionate being who, on the path of enlightenment, helped others. This person doesn't run after enlightenment or grasp at anything, even if that thing is the Buddha.

[20:33]

This person has simply stopped. She is no longer caught by anything, even or teaching. The businessless person is the true person of no rank inside each one of us. This is the essential teaching of Master Linji. So Linji, or Rinzai, asks, who is this true man of no rank? And the monk back he hesitates and Rinzai says this true man of no rank what a shit stick he is Yu Dao Po sits with this question given to her by her teacher to contemplate until it ripens in her and she understands and awakens coming into her full strength as a true person of no rank so she can

[21:39]

with one blow cut Mount Hoa in two. We all have our places, I think, where we rank. We rank ourselves. We rank and judge other people. And we... at least project how other people are ranking and judging us. And we make, without necessarily full awareness, subtexts of ranking that we may do when we learn someone's profession or when we see their life activities or their ways of being, their behavior. We may do it by class. We may do it by race. So, titles, professional titles like President, Captain, Roshi, the one percenter, a homeless person, a scholar, a mother, a generous person, a person of color,

[23:12]

And as we are putting these labels on, there's a kind of an inherent ranking that can go along with that, a comparative ranking. And these are kind of ways in which we say who we are at some level by the comparing. So Linzi's question, Linzi's question, who is the true person? of no rank is a powerful one, and it really cuts to the heart of this process of how, in fact, we do rank and compare. And each time we do that, whether consciously or pre-consciously, we are making a choice. And part of the choice is to continue and strengthen a habit formation, a habit pattern, so that pattern of ranking gets stronger, or we can make a choice, we can make a vow, and have an intention toward noticing when we are ranking, when we are comparing, and observing that process, keeping it company, Thich Nhat Hanh would say,

[24:40]

not clinging to it, and using the skillful means that are part of practice, part of what we learn to do, to allow that to be present and to decrease its valence, so that each time we make that choice not to buy into the habit formation, but to learn to notice it, and to be present with it without holding it, it weakens that pattern a little bit, potentially each time. And that's the good news. That's good news of our practice, I think. So... In the relative realm, to be a true person of no rank goes against the whole of our cultural imperative to be somebody.

[25:55]

We learn that one quite early. We learn way before kindergarten comparative thinking and ranking. In families, we learn it in school. Who's the better person? athlete who's better at math who's smarter who's prettier who's whatever it is so we know we're early trained for ranking and even at the level of our first meeting in this culture particularly we ask particular questions and it's interesting when you actually listen to what the questions are because they have some inherent possible ranking underneath them So when we meet somebody, we will ask quite early on, what do you do? Well, that's a harmless enough question, except if somebody says I'm a custodian or somebody says I'm a CEO, we may very possibly do a subtle internal ranking about that.

[27:06]

Where are you from? Where are you really from is another question. Where did you go to college? How old are you? Where do you live? Are you married? All these have inherent possible assumptions that go with them and rankings. In these days, we might be saying something like, what do you think about what happened on January 6th at the Capitol? Et cetera. But that's loaded. It's already a rank load. And then it becomes really interesting to consider, given this imperative to be somebody in this culture, who would we be? How would we be? What would we be without any such ranks or labels?

[28:11]

Actually, it's an electrifying thought. Quite freeing, actually, if we witness Yu Dao Po's great exhilaration at the freedom. And it can be a frightening one as well. to be without any way of saying who we are at all. And that seems to have been a piece of the monk's pullback or hesitation. At least that's how I hear that or see that. But it's interesting to imagine how would our lives be without any such rank at all. we speak in the dharma often about non-self we speak of the dropping away of body and mind and many of us have had experiences of this and we have this really as an aspiration on the one hand and yet we each have these places

[29:23]

that we cling to. So it's really challenging work. This is not, as they say, not work for sissies, to keep choosing to notice the places where we hold on, where we cling to rank, to judgment, to formulations. So, yeah. I invite you for a minute. you will to just take a moment here and and look into your own life experience feel into the places in yourself where you know where you're aware and compare with yourself judge yourself and or others just take a moment for this this now just to really i have this vow to not compare and it's easier said than done but i have this intention to not be ranking or comparing and one of the ones that i work with there are many but one of the ones that i work with is i have this long-term

[31:21]

fear of public speaking. And I really have to work with it. It rises up, and I stay with it, and I work with it, and I'm aware of it, and I keep it company as Thich Nhat Hanh's, and I use all the various skillful means that we learn in this practice. And I think it's better. Here I am this morning. It's better. And I still have to keep working with it when it rises up and stay with it until that sort of body-mind cloud moves off again. I'm nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody too? Then there's a pair of us. Don't tell. They'd banish us, you know.

[32:23]

How dreary to be somebody. How public like a frog to tell your name the live long day to an admiring bog. That's another sin master, Emily Dickinson, who gets it all in lines. Roshi Tetsuken Bernie Glassman was the Dharma successor of Hakuryu Taisan Maizumi Roshi and at one point after Maizumi's death having waited with deference to his teacher's tradition made the decision to disrobe and famously took to wearing very bright Hawaiian shirts.

[33:27]

And his reason, this would not apply necessarily at all for other people with robe, but he felt that the robe as a mark of rank, of a defined status in a sense, would get in the way for him of a heart-mind connection with others, with a person or with other persons. So he chose to de-rank, so to speak, in that sense. And another way that I think he lived out this true person of no rank, he came often to the Zen Center in Los Angeles because that was his home temple. and would always be giving a Dharma talk when he came. And when he ended his talk and there would be questions, he would respond to the questions, but he said after every response, that's just my opinion, man, every time.

[34:37]

It's just my opinion, man. He used to smoke cigars, I think, and then probably had to stop for health reasons, but he used to do this sort of Groucho Marx thing with the cigars. It's just my opinion, man. And I heard that as I received that as an invitation for me to go in and trust my own not knowing or my possible eventual knowing as opposed to necessarily looking out for answers. And another of his great teachings, which I valued, was he famously chose to step forward, to say yes. He chose yes all the time. And instead of talking about walking off the 100-foot pole, he talked about plunging off the 100-foot pole. And that's a nice symbol for me, though for the true person of no rank, this freedom is deeply available.

[35:46]

So the teaching story of the ox harder is, I think, my most cherished story in all of our practice. If there are those that don't know this story, I would encourage you to look it up. It's a beautiful story, often with wonderful illustrations and poetry that go along with it. It's 10 pictures of an ox herder who goes off in search of the ox, which represents enlightenment eventually. And so you see him progressing along and the ox is hidden behind bushes and you just see his tail and so on and so forth. And eventually he encounters the ox and then they both disappear. So he's awakened and enlightened. And then in the next last picture, I think it is, you see him riding back home.

[36:56]

on the back of the ox playing his flute. And in the very last picture, he is, which is called Return to the Marketplace, which is interesting, Return to Everyday Life. And he's described as being a little pot-bellied by that point and a little scruffy and dusty. And he enters the, quote, marketplace. maybe to be your next door neighbor the guy down the street whatever but then there's this interesting phrase with bliss bestowing hands which i think is the most beautiful description i can imagine for a bodhisattva energy so he's basically seeing what is needed and he's responding to what is needed. But the essential thing here, I think, is that he is responding from vow with bliss bestowing hands.

[38:07]

So we chant vows every day in our practice, and each of us may also have in our own personal practice vows that we say or chant. every day and reinforce for ourselves as our particular expression of commitment. So when I took Jukai, when I took the precepts, as is always so, when Jukai was given a Dharma name, and I understood that Dharma name, and as it was explained to me as well, that it represented both my true nature and my practice aspiration so to for me to be to embody to live into luminous heartedness and to see and know the luminous heart of all sentient beings that's my personal vow and then when the larger larger other vow is what we

[39:18]

chant variously in different traditions. When I was first doing this, we used to say, sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them all. And later it was changed to, sentient beings are numberless, I vow to serve them all. So this is the undergirding vow in the Mahayana tradition, to choose, not just to respond, but to respond by vow, to see what is needed, and to be, to embody the vow. We could say maybe the ox herder was envowed, and embodying this great freedom of being a person of no rank, true person of no rank, the unweightedness of it, the business, Blissness of it, as Thich Nhat Hanh would say.

[40:20]

So we all begin. Come into practice choosing at some level to respond to this call. have a nice honeymoon period sometimes in practice, and then, whoops, we come to our stuff. We have to see, whoops, again and again, whoops. And we have this vow to keep trucking, to keep working, to keep seeing more clearly. One of the prayers that I say is, may I see that which I don't yet see. May I be open to hear what I don't yet hear. So this is how we live by these vows that we choose. So we can sense into potentially more and more the true person of no rank that's in each one of us. So I think maybe I'll stop here now and so we can talk together.

[41:32]

So please bring a question. Or if you'd like to share what might have risen up for you when I invited you to consider patterns, you may have a ranking. I especially invite those of you who may tend not to speak to step off the 100-foot pole. We would love to hear your voices and your thoughts. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Gary Artem, I invite you to unmute yourself. Hi, Penelope. Hi, Gary. I'm going to play devil's advocate. So, Dogen speaks of some pots settle best low on the shelf and some pots settle best

[42:35]

high on the shelf. How do you negotiate that kind of ranking of the pots with your person of no rank? I don't know that reference. I don't know the reference from Dogen, but so can you say a little more what? Well, he just speaks of, in a metaphorical way, he speaks of how certain things settle and are, you know, I can particularly feel that expression with when Sojin, you know, working with Sojin for so many years as a student, he would say, You know, you've got positions and it was pretty much clear that it was based on where you were at in your practice.

[43:39]

You follow me? So that's kind of a rank. Yes. So I'm just asking you as devil's advocate. And, you know, Dogen was using pots as an example. And I think it was Tenzo Kyoku where where he speaks of that. Because there's a lot about kitchen references in it. Okay. That's my question. How do you negotiate this no rank idea with differentiation? So there's the, you know, the vertical and the horizontal and the vertical, right? Yeah. As I understand it, and this is just my opinion, man, but as I understand this, at any place, we may be placed in rank.

[44:46]

If you start a job, you start at the entry level, and you have a title at that level. You have a rank assigned to you. Or if you get to be such and such a position in the Zendo, that's a position or a rank. So that's the external. Then the choice elements have to do with how do you be with that? How do you notice that you're comparing or you're feeling envy or you're judging how somebody else rings the bell and does whatever vows and et cetera? You can go in that that's a choice or you can notice that perhaps you're doing that. that's the horizontal then and work with it but it it's actually not horizontal if the but you you could say you in a way you horizontalize it if there's such a verb in other words ranking isn't what we're talking about is an internal process not not the x there's there's external ranking everywhere in the world that that exists that's

[46:03]

that's there. And then how do we be with that? How do we work with how we rank or experience others ranking us? How do we become eventually a true person of no rank? That's how I understand that. Okay. That's good enough. Thank you. Kelsey Cherlin, please unmute yourself. Morning, Penelope. Hi, Elsie. Thank you so much. I know. Your talk was awesome. And it really, it really just was the right talk for me right now. I'm thinking about some different ranks in my life right now. I'm pretty pregnant and expecting soon. Just kind of this whole new space and this whole new identity has been a whole different level of ranking and comparing with other people who are pregnant and also as I look towards parenthood.

[47:21]

And there's this kind of almost privilege right now that I receive or that I perceive that I receive people when they across me in the grocery store will be like oh whoa excuse me you know and give me lots of room to waddle past them um and then and then my friends who whose babies are earth side you know there's kind of this this rank all of a sudden that goes down and all of a sudden they'll like postpartum parent or mom is no longer you know kind of given this space and all this honor and all that stuff. And so there's this piece of me where when we talk about no rank and being encouraged to lean into the beauty and the strength that it takes to be a parent or a mom and to really see how, I guess, honorable and like ranked that is, is that's that's kind of where it's landing for me.

[48:24]

And so there's this, like, encouragement of not being humble and not being, yeah, about that aspect. And I'm not there yet, but there's this kind of tension that I feel often when there's places where you are maybe societally all of a sudden lower rank and, you know, trying to lean into, no, that's not true. So I don't know. That's kind of the stuff that it stirred up for me. Thank you. I have a memory of what you're sharing of that, the privilege, so to speak, of the pregnancy, at least in parts of our culture. That's not everywhere, but in parts of our culture, that is so. And then delivering the baby and becoming virtually invisible, because then people only see the baby and how beautiful the baby is, and they sort of, as a sideline, say, oh, yeah, hello. In passing, that's a very... Typical thing and if and I don't think I understand Be interesting to hear how you feel, but I don't think I understand being a person of no rank as not being able to see and give deep value to and the value of of good parenting is about as the best job in the whole world and

[49:51]

I mean, can be, in my view. So I don't understand no rank as a devaluation. I think I ranked being a person of no rank. I think you just called me out on ranking a person of being no rank. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Well, thank you for that. It's lovely to see you, Kelsey. Go well at this time. Thank you. Sandeep L., I invite you to unmute yourself. Hi, Sandeep. Thank you so much for your talk. I feel like a lot came up for me. And mainly because I feel like I've had to become a person of no right from such a young age and hold multiple perspectives.

[50:55]

Oh, I can't hear you. And hold what? Multiple points of view at the same time. And so that was based on like me having to survive day to day, like it was that real, that need to do that i didn't have much of a choice but it's gotten now as i've gotten older and embraced what i've gone through um and developed more agency i understand the responsibility that comes with power um i feel like i'm climbing a mountain and i can see more and more and i feel like um people who are in power of positions of power need to use their voices more. And so I'm really encouraged by the fact that more white folks are talking about uncomfortable things and how we can have multiple points of view and diversity and all get along together.

[52:00]

There doesn't have to be a hierarchy. There can be equanimity in no range. Yes, to all that you said, thank you, Sandeep. I just want to pick up on one piece for a second, which is that there are people who have nominally high rank in some way. We don't have kings and queens in our culture, but we do have... movie stars and basketball heroes and sometimes the occasional CEO who could be maybe generous what a concept so and can use that rank to act for good for true good so long as they don't take themselves heavily so they keep themselves light and don't buy into

[53:02]

press to speak about that but yes may it be so that as we I also think another piece of that is that part of us as we work developmentally we say we need to develop a self before we start working in the other direction on letting go the self and so that's another component of this for me and I am also happy that we are beginning to truly open to where our country how our country even got founded and where we are historically and how we're how we have to take a look at and act from choosing to make changes in the whole process of racism, anti-racism, prejudices across the board.

[54:08]

Yeah. Thank you for naming it. Thank you for using your position, your platform of privilege for naming it now. Thank you. Thanks. Nice to see you, Sandeep. Rondi slash Charlie. Please unmute yourself. Charlie, you have to unmute yourself. There you go. Okay. Thank you so much, Penelope. Tremendously varied and rich talk. I appreciate it very much. But I also, thinking back to South Pacific, there's a song that Mary Martin sings that I will de-genderize and say, I want to wash that person right out of my hair and send them on their way.

[55:21]

Have you thought about Mary's No, I pretty much stayed with Ezio Pinza, but I'm not sure that washing somebody out of my hair, so to speak, or one washing somebody out of their hair has to do so much with, it certainly has to do with preference, that sure. Okay, well, I'll frame it in a different way from your talk. And mention a person of no business with business, and that would be a tea lady. You're familiar with the various koans about the tea ladies? No, I mean. Oh, all right. Well, the tea ladies have a tea shop and the monks come by and they buy tea from her. And then they start arguing about the Dharma.

[56:27]

And then she comes out and gives them a zinger, and it's all over. So she has a business, and she injects herself into their argument, but she ends the argument. So it's both and. It's big mind and it's small mind all at the same time, and all of those stories. I kind of, now I didn't understand what you were referring to, but in the koans that I read, especially in The Hidden Lamp, because there's so many tea women and donut ladies in these stories, people of ostensibly less rank, we could say, culturally speaking, and they're the ones with the wisdom each time, and they do this sort of rinse-eye shake-up line. I'm not so sure they're washing... somebody out of their hair, or hair in general, as they are cutting with a very sharp sword, the way that Rinzai did in the koan.

[57:37]

Take your shit stick. Wake up, wake up! Well, if you use a sharp sword the right way, you get rid of the person. You get rid of the ego. Yeah. If the point of the sword can find the ego. Yeah. Yes, hopefully so. Well, thanks again. You're welcome. Thank you. Ross Blum. Hi, Ross. Hi, Penelope. Good morning to you. In the Heart Sutra, we chant, all dharmas are marked with... So my question is, what choice do we have if things fundamentally are empty? Well, yeah, but I think I'm speaking more in the relative realm, in the absolute realm.

[58:42]

All things are empty, but we're not living from that place completely. That's an aspiration to be in that level of freedom, of non-rank, of however you want to describe that. But we don't live there each moment. We have to keep marking the material as it rises up. That's how I take that. I see. Yeah. I see it a little differently, that emptiness is always there, that we actually are living in emptiness, and the form or the discernments that come up for us and the choices that we make come up in the so-called relative world, but it's all one thing. And so the emptiness is always there, which for me begs the question, when I have an idea and make a choice,

[59:42]

You know, the Bernie's opinion man thing kind of softens the choice because it's my cause and conditions that are bringing the choice in focus. Right. And it is easy to forget that we are coursing in the world of emptiness. We are what? Yes. We're coursing or living in this world of emptiness, and if we forget that, then it winds up being a ranking thing. And thinking about Gary's question about where does the pot go? Well, if we're stuck on the emptiness side, then the pots are going to go anywhere, and that's not going to work for our kitchen. So we have to find, you know, what's the appropriate place for things to be and rest and settle. Like, where is the appropriate place for me to settle? Am I taking up too much time now as we're talking? And I want to make room for Kabir. So I'm going to say goodbye now.

[60:43]

That's the choice I'm making. Okay. Thank you. Kabir? Hi, Penelope. Hi. Hi. Impulse. You know, so that book you mentioned, the seven habits of highly effective people. Yeah. You said that there's a space. For me, impulse kind of blowtorches it. You know, I just go for it. And, you know, so at times it turns out nice, but a lot of times it doesn't. I mean, so how do you tame the fire of impulse? Yeah. You know, that shake within, like, oh, yeah, I'm going to do it. You know, I'll just say this. I'm going to do this, you know, at the speed of light. It is almost at the speed. That's a koan you've just created there.

[61:46]

But at any rate, yeah. And he's describing, or in that sentence, he's describing between the stimulus and the response. There is this millisecond. There is this... And so when you say how to tame that jump impulse, how to tame it is work over time. It's observing it. It's feeling the impulse, learning how to, over time, maybe recognize the impulse as it rises to jump and to see how it is to hold the impulse just for a second longer. in all the skillful ways that we are taught to be with something without necessarily immediately enacting it. But it's a process in the relative realm, I would say. So whether we're living in emptiness or not, we're still dealing day to day with these behaviors that hinder us.

[62:57]

So how to work with that? Yes, thank you. Just keep trying. It doesn't, not to blame or, you know, make excuses, but we're also so tempted to be faster, to be more fun, to be more romantic, to be more, to be, have this, you know, I mean, we're living in samsara for God's sake. So, I mean, I just keep getting back up. That's it. Thank you. Eight down and nine up, as they say. Just keep leaping. Just keep leaping. Thank you so much. Thank you.

[63:40]

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