Good morning, everyone. I want to talk this morning about the Mahayana Bodhisattva worldview as a foundation of Zen and of Sazen practice. So I've been speaking a lot about Zen and the 13th century Soto founder Dogen's teachings about shifting perspectives and opening up our perspectives on reality and his various teachings about that. And sometimes, I think particularly here in the West, we may think of this Sazen meditation practice we've just been doing as, well, a kind of therapeutic technique, a kind of way of settling and

[01:02]

calming and opening and developing flexibility and a kind of wider ability to respond and so forth. And it is all of that. And it is helpful to have a practice, a regular practice of settling and developing some sense of calm and responsiveness. But it's also grounded in the culture of Mahayana Buddhism, Great Vehicle Buddhism, of the bodhisattvas, the enlightening beings committed to universal awakening. So the more we do this practice, the more we see our interconnectedness with all beings, this reality of our inclusiveness and connectedness with all beings. And the bodhisattva idea is connected with that. And

[02:04]

we talk about that in terms of the bodhisattva precepts, the ethical guidelines. Maybe the precepts go beyond just our usual sense of ethics, the sense of how to live fully in the world. And practices, specific practices, the paramitas, generosity, ethical conduct, patience, enthusiasm or effort, skillful means, commitment, various practices that we can actually do to develop our capacity to be effective in the world, in our own lives, in our own confusion, and also with beings around us, and in terms of responding to the world. But the background of this, well, the bodhisattva idea, the bodhisattva practice also has to do with, well, it comes out of the great Mahayana sutras, the sutras of the

[03:08]

bodhisattva vehicle, which in some ways are really strange. So I want to talk about that today. But I also want to talk about it in terms of its connection to our Zen practice. So I've often talked about one of Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen in Japan, one of his kind of primary teachings, one of his first teachings about Zazen, this incredibly radical statement he makes in his Self-Fulfillment Samadhi, which we chant sometimes, when one displays the Buddha mudra, this Zazen posture, with one's whole body and mind sitting upright in this samadhi, even for a short time, everything in the entire dharma world, the whole universe, all the universes, often we want to say that, everything in the entire phenomenal world

[04:14]

becomes Buddha mudra, becomes this uprightness. And all space in the universe completely becomes enlightenment. All space in the universe completely awakens. This is what Dogen says in his very first teaching about the meaning of Zazen, in the whole-hearted way. So what does this mean? This is not just about our own personal sense of calm and flexibility. This is an incredible radical statement, as I've talked about a number of times. How is this possible? Well, I want to suggest today that this has something to do with this radical worldview in the Bodhisattva Sutras about the nature of reality. And there are lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of examples, so I'm going to talk about some of those from some

[05:19]

of the sutras, a few of my favorite sutras. And we can see these as metaphors or practice instructions or teachings about reality, but they also have to do with just this, this dharma of suchness that we were talking about this spring that Dongshan, the Sutra founder in China in the 9th century, talked about. So we can get caught up in some kind of abstract theoretical discussion about what is reality or something like that. And that's kind of maybe an interesting pastime. Some of us who are philosophically inclined might be interested in it, but really all of this is about the practical question. How do we live in the world? How are we helpful in the world? How do we be upright in the world? How do we display

[06:22]

the Buddha mudra with our whole body and mind? How do we give ourselves fully to our life and to each other and to the world and to our loved ones and to be helpful in the world? So I want to just talk about some of the images about the cosmos or cosmology in some of these sutras, and what is this about? And again, I think we should take them metaphorically in one sense, but also they seem to be so persistent that I wonder, what is this saying about the reality that the Buddha sees or that whoever actually channeled these great Bodhisattva teachings that are in these sutras, what does it say about them?

[07:40]

So I'm going to start with just a few images from the Malakirti Sutra. So this is a picture of the Malakirti Sutra. This is an old sutra about a great enlightened layperson, so very relevant to us. The Malakirti was a layperson. So the story goes, this isn't exactly history, but it's a great venerated sutra in which the Malakirti is said to have been a person completely immersed in the world at the time of Shakyamuni Buddha 2,500 years ago in what's now northeastern India. And even though he was completely immersed in the world, he criticized the great monk disciples of the Buddha for not being fully, not fully walking the walk so to speak of their practice. And he entered into all the worldly realms there were, and yet each of them used that to help awaken beings, liberate beings from suffering. So

[08:45]

that's who the Malakirti was. And he teaches, in some ways his teaching has to do with emptiness. It's not nothingness, emptiness. So we'll have some time for discussion afterwards, and please ask about any of... So I'm going to cover a lot of somewhat technical Mahayana ground, but emptiness doesn't mean nothingness. It means the emptiness of independent, inherent, substantial existence of us or anything else. Or we could say emptiness is relativity or interconnectedness, that nothing is separate or estranged from everything, actually. And the Malakirti especially taught about this through inconceivable displays. This word inconceivable is kind of helpful. It means that we can't conceive of what he's showing

[09:49]

us. We can't get our heads around it. It's not something we can conceptualize. And yet the Malakirti displayed it. So this gets to something important about this sense of what reality is that is part of a few of these sutras. So just a few images from the sutra, the Malakirti, the sutra's kind of situation that begins the sutra is that the Malakirti, the Buddha realizes that the Malakirti is sick. He asks his great disciples and bodhisattvas to go call on him. He's sick and he wants to hear how he is. And one by one, these monks and bodhisattvas all say, well, I'm sorry. The last time I ran across the Malakirti, I'm very reluctant to go because the last time I saw him, he criticized my practice

[10:55]

in terms of the area in which I'm most proficient. And so this is kind of humorous in a way. Finally, Manjushri, the great bodhisattva of wisdom, whose image is on our altar directly below the Buddha sitting on a lion because of his fearlessness holding a teaching staff. Anyway, Manjushri, so I'll go and talk to the Malakirti. And then all the Buddhas and all the bodhisattvas and all the disciples and all the heavenly beings gathered around the Buddha decide they want to go too, to hear this conversation. Anyway, they all go to the Malakirti's sick room. He knows that they're coming, so he empties his room to show emptiness. And anyway, I don't want to get too caught up in each of these stories because they're all very amazing. But they get to this room, and it's this tiny room, and 10 foot by 10 foot, maybe a quarter of the size of this endo or more. And there's all these beings, and how are they going to fit in there? But somehow miraculously they

[12:02]

fit in there. And then one of the great monk disciples of the Buddha, Shariputra, wonders where they're all going to sit down. And Malakirti said, hey, Shariputra, did you come here for the Dharma, or did you come here for a chair? And Malakirti said, no, no, no, I came to ask. And Malakirti then asks Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, with his experience of millions of different Buddha fields in all directions, where the very best lion throne chairs are. Manjushri unhesitatingly mentions a Buddha field, many Buddha fields distant in the east, that direction, which has the most splendid thrones, each 102,000 miles high. Malakirti instantly concentrates his mind, so that the Buddha of that distant Buddha

[13:05]

field sends 3.2 million of those thrones, which all land in the house of the Malakirti, which is smaller than this endo. They all fit inside the Malakirti's room without interfering with or impinging upon each other the room, the town of Vaishali, where he lives, the land of India, or the world. After the great Bodhisattvas sit themselves on the thrones, the Malakirti teaches the novice Bodhisattvas, and even the disciples in this room, to extend themselves so that everyone can take a seat. So this is one example. First of all, what does it mean that there are Buddha fields, millions of different Buddha fields in all directions, where Manjushri is visited, and then, much less these thrones that are millions of, or 102,000 miles high each, and that they could fit into this little room. Anyway, so this is just one example of our whole, of

[14:06]

inconceivability, of our whole sense of space and proportion and dimension being turned inside out. But also, there's this, what are all these different Buddha fields? So there's some other things in this Malakirti sutra, just to mention, you know, later on, there are these Bodhisattvas who come from these different Buddha fields or world systems, and some of them are told by the Buddhas in their Buddha fields, when you get to that Buddha field of Shakyamuni, that's ours, you know, you should not be disrespectful of the great Bodhisattvas there, even though they're very small, you know, I mean, human size, my size, because, you know, they have to practice very hard, because they live in this Buddha field called endurance, that's the world we live in, and it's very hard to practice this,

[15:09]

the really great Bodhisattvas, even though they seem really puny. So, you know, this is, you know, another thing, and then at some point it describes some of these other Buddha fields and how the Buddhas there teach, and they teach, you know, not just through words or through silence like the Buddha often teaches, but all different kinds of words, one of them teaches through fragrance, he sits up on his Buddha seat and emanates various fragrances and the various members of the assembly understand the Dharma through the various fragrances, this is just, you know, another, just one example. There's another image in the sutra where, yeah, the Malakirti, within this inconceivable realm as described or demonstrated by the Malakirti, Bodhisattvas can place the vast cosmic king of mountains, Mount Sumeru, and

[16:17]

I don't know if this is, if this was supposed to be Mount Everest or, there's a Mount Kailash in Tibet, which sometimes they refer to it, which is supposed to be like the center in Indian mythology, it was the kind of axis of the world, the center of the world, a very high mountain, but anyway, these Bodhisattvas can place this vast cosmic king of mountains into a mustard seed, without shrinking the mountain or expanding the seed, a Bodhisattva in this realm can pour all the oceans into a pore of her skin, without disturbing any of the fish or other creatures dwelling in the ocean, a Bodhisattva living in the inconceivable may pick up a whole galaxy in his hand, toss it like a boomerang around the universe, then put it back in its place, without disturbing any of the beings therein. These maneuvers can be seen by the affected beings, but only by those who will be inspired and led into training in the Bodhisattva disciplines by witnessing these miracles.

[17:21]

So what's going on here? What does this mean that there are these Buddha fields, millions of Buddha fields in all of the Mount Kirti's strange actions, where these Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in these Buddha fields, millions of Buddha fields, are these other planets or galaxies are traveling through space to come to earth? I don't know, maybe that's what it is. I'll talk more about this tomorrow night, but I'm reading modern theoretical physics a little bit, this idea of different dimensions. I don't know what this means, but I'm starting to wonder, is this just some, well, we see it as a metaphor of the complexity of reality, that we don't know the...

[18:26]

We don't know. We know something's happening, but we don't know what it is, that we can't understand how deep the reality of spiritual practice is, that there are Bodhisattvas and Buddhas all over the place. And so when we think about all the problems in the world and some of you are social activists like me and wonder what to do about climate change and so forth, one part of that is just responding to the political and corporate powers that be and so forth, but what other options are there when we start to see that reality is not limited to what we think it is? Now I'm not saying that we should get rid of science and education and our usual way of thinking. I'm not saying forget about confessional reality

[19:36]

at all. There are forces in our society now trying to eliminate education and science or at least defund it significantly, but I think we need to try and understand, even as we understand that we can't understand maybe this level of reality. But I think it's worth considering what's going on here, and especially as we settle into practice, what's going on here? What are all these stories from the Bodhisattva Sutras about? What are they telling us? Again, I think it's fine to take them as fables and metaphors and so forth, as spiritual teachings that we can look at, like parables in the Bible and so forth. There's something there, but what does it mean about our reality?

[20:42]

So I'll continue with some more examples. The Lotus Sutra, one of my favorite sutras and Dogen's favorite sutra too. So this is part of our Zen legacy. This isn't separate from our practice. Just a couple of stories from the Lotus Sutra. Gene Reeves comes here every year and talks about the Lotus Sutra, and I've talked about it. But one of the amazing stories is about this stupa, this reliquary of an ancient Buddha from a very, very ancient past Buddha field, millions of ages past maybe. I don't know how to pronounce it. But it's hard to equate that with our sense of it, maybe from millions of previous big bangs ago. I don't know. Anyway, but this stupa and the mummified Buddha inside it appears whenever the Lotus Sutra is taught. It says so right in the Lotus Sutra. Talk about inconceivability.

[21:52]

What? Wait, what? So in the Lotus Sutra, it says that this stupa appears and floats above Shakyamuni as he's saying the Lotus Sutra. And then out of the stupa comes this voice saying, well done, Shakyamuni. Very good. Thank you for telling the Lotus Sutra. And everyone's amazed. And Shakyamuni explains that this mummified Buddha in the stupa comes every time, whenever the Lotus Sutra is taught. And then he says even more, if you really want to see him, then I have to call for all the emanations of Shakyamuni Buddha to appear. And if they all really want it, then the doors will open and you can see this mummified Buddha. And that happens. And the stupa again is floating above Vulture Peak where Shakyamuni is sitting.

[22:54]

So then they all float above Vulture Peak. And then Shakyamuni sits next to Abundant Treasures Buddha is his name, this ancient mummified Buddha. And they both sit there together and talk. And so whenever you see an image of two Buddhas sitting next to each other, that's from the story. So what? I mean, what is that about? I mean, this is a very strange story. And the whole assembly is floating there around the stupa of this ancient mummified Buddha who's sitting there talking with Shakyamuni from some ancient Buddha field from a long time ago. Then later on in the Lotus Sutra, there's another story which I've talked about a lot about. Shakyamuni, meanwhile, is saying, so which of you, good disciples of the Buddha, will come in the future evil age and keep alive the Lotus Sutra? And this includes some

[23:56]

of those Bodhisattvas who've traveled from distant, very distant world systems, whatever that means. And they say, oh, we'll come back. And then Shakyamuni says, we'll come back and they say, we'll come back and teach the Lotus Sutra in the future evil age. And I always imagine that means, you know, the age of climate change and so forth. But anyway, at that point, Shakyamuni says, oh, don't worry about it. Actually, and then emerge from under the floorboards of the ancient dragons and gate, Zendo, and everywhere else under the earth, thousands and thousands and millions of ancient Bodhisattvas who are obviously very wise. I mean, they just shine. And they each have many, many Bodhisattvas. They just pop up from out of the open space under the ground. And they're always available and ready to keep alive the teaching. So what's that about? Under our seats, there's these ancient

[25:00]

Bodhisattvas ready to come and express the teaching and liberate beings. So those are just two stories from the Lotus Sutra. Then from the Avatamsaka, Flower Ornament Sutra, a few more teaching, a few more stories. One of them, Maitreya, who's supposed to be the next future Buddha, is one of the last parts of this huge sutra. This Flower Ornament Sutra is supposed to be what Buddha said when he first awakened. And the translation of it by Tom Cleary, wonderful translation, is close to 1,600 pages. And that's supposed to be like the miniature version of what he really said. And the story is that nobody could understand it at that time. Maybe not many people can understand it now either, but it's very visionary.

[26:08]

Flowery, as the name would say, sutra, with many names of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and meditation states. It's very psychedelic. If you try and read it, it's wonderful to read, but don't try and understand it. Just enjoy the visuals. But in that sutra, the last part of it, there's this pilgrim named Sudhana who goes on a pilgrimage and he visits 52 teachers from every walk of life. There's all kinds of people there, men and women, and kings and beggars and queens and goddesses, and anyway, all kinds of people. And near the end, Sudhana comes to Maitreya, the next future Buddha, who's now a Bodhisattva, and Maitreya shows him a vast tower that epitomizes the Bodhisattva understanding of the universe. Sudhana enters. Well, first he doesn't know how to enter, and then, I don't know if it's

[27:14]

Maitreya himself or Manjushri who helps him and clicks his finger and the door is open. And then Sudhana enters and finds other vast towers, all overflowing with their own amazing sights, including the previous course of the diverse enlightening careers of Maitreya in many strange new worlds. Each tower is as extensive as all of space, each one. But without any of them interfering with the space of the others, Maitreya sends Sudhana back to Manjushri for more teaching. So anyway, this is another example. So just a few more. So I know this sort of seems science fiction-y and weird, and what is this about and all, but again, this is what the scriptures of the Bodhisattva way tell us. What's going on here?

[28:19]

So, in the Flower and the Sutra, the main Bodhisattva, there are many, but the main one is Samantabhadra, the Bodhisattva, universal virtue, who is the Bodhisattva who, we don't have images of him here, but he's in the world in all kinds of places, often sitting on an elephant and acting in the world for the benefit of beings, and he enters various different meditations. One of them is called the Lion Emergence Samadhi, which reveals to the assembled Bodhisattvas the vast array of Buddhas, lambs, enlightening beings, powers of Samadhis, and manifestations of teachings from past, present, and future that all exist within the oceanic Buddha-lambs on a single hair-tip, and on every hair-tip. So, I lose out on that one, but anyway, every hair-tip. There's other places where it talks about there being Buddhas

[29:31]

and Bodhisattvas on the tip of every blade of grass, so I guess Walt Whitman knew about that one, and there's another one where it talks about there being, well, it goes in, it gets really picturesque, but basically it says that there are Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in every atom. So, okay, what does all this mean about our world, about our universe, about our practice, about reality, about our lives? So, again, you know, you may just take these as kind of fables or some kind of science fiction literature or something. But I think it says something about the dynamic

[30:37]

nature of the universe and of reality and of that which is so far beyond what we can know as limited human beings, which is not to denigrate that which we can know. So, there's a lot that we can do and that we do not, and that we can express, and yet to see this in this background of this totally strange and wondrous and dynamic universe that's working in all kinds of mysterious ways, I think if we're willing to just say, okay, well, here are all these stories, these images about what Bodhisattvas are. So, this word Bodhisattva, enlightened being, it refers on one level to these great wondrous

[31:54]

things like Kanon, Navala Kutishvara, Shohak, who is coming next month to teach about this Bodhisattva of Compassion, and Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, and there's many different Bodhisattva figures, great Bodhisattvas, but all of us, at the end of this talk, we're going to recite the four Bodhisattva vows. All of us are doing Bodhisattva practice just by the virtue of your showing up this morning, just by sitting upright, doing Zazen. So, you know, Doge says this is what we are doing when we sit Zazen, and it may be that also we are finding a way to kind of find some calm and settledness, and we all need that in our life, and this world is difficult as well as strange and wondrous. But I want to suggest that the vastness of the possibilities of this world, and that

[32:59]

we might actually try on, seeing that all these, you know, there's so many of these stories in the Bodhisattva scriptures that we might consider them, and we might consider that reality is much more strange than we can even imagine, and that our sense of, you know, like the Malakirti's little room and all the Bodhisattvas sitting in it, and the huge chairs spinning in it, you know, that space is not what we think it is. It's like, you know, I mentioned my favorite American Buddhist movie, Men in Black, where, some of you haven't seen it, so all I'll say is this little dog who says, you humans, get

[34:13]

over thinking, you know, that things are, that size is important. Something important can be very, very small. Anyway. Or it can be very, very large. Anyway. Our sense of proportion is based on just one dimension, and there are many dimensions of reality. Anyway, I just wanted to kind of put that out there, and I don't have any answers to what do we do with this, but I think it opens up some possibility of, that there are more options to how we can be helpful in the world than we ordinarily see, and when we feel like overwhelmed, or burnt out, or, you know, all those things that are easy to feel, or overwhelmed, that we're not, that we're not, that there's more to see than we're seeing.

[35:21]

So maybe I'll just stop there, and ask for comments, responses, questions, befuddlements, so please feel free. Anybody willing to entertain the thought of a strange new world? Jeremy. So the Malakirti Sutra is one of my favorites, and there's the figure Mara, that's supposed to be like the corrupter, or the one that preaches the sense pleasures and stuff like that, and the Malakirti Sutra of the Malakirti says that Mara is actually a great Bodhisattva that hardens other Bodhisattvas by offering Mara's teachings, and it's I think the Malakirti Sutra, the idea might be that the ideal life is that of a lay practitioner,

[36:35]

but I think really what he's saying is that the possibility for Bodhisattva work is in any aspect of life, in lay, and in monk, and priest, and so on, and the spectrum. Wherever you are. Yeah, yeah. So I thought I might share that. And that Sutra, it also says, you know, only a Bodhisattva can hassle another Bodhisattva. So when you're feeling hassled or harassed by someone, you might say, see, oh, is that person helping me develop my practice? And this is kind of, you know, it's the incident where I was trained, people used to say, when somebody has some really big difficulty, oh, it's good for your practice. It's kind of irritating to hear that. But, anyway. Other, yes, Jim? I had a couple thoughts, well, more than one, when you were speaking, but I just wondered how, what you would think. One was, with all those beings, friends, and so forth,

[37:40]

fit in the kind of room, the image that came to my mind is our heads. Everything, these vests, universes, fit in our heads, in our thoughts. And that maybe the stories are so fantastic, but we believe the stories that we're telling ourselves all the time. And maybe that's just as fantastic. Uh-huh. I was, as you were saying, that I was imaging, you know, we all know what a hard drive is. When I was growing up, the most advanced computer, maybe in the world, at least in the country, was at a university near where I lived. And it filled a whole building. And it could do, you know, the amount of stuff it could do is like, you know, minuscule compared to anything now. So, anyway. But, you know, the way they

[38:46]

talk in some of these sutras and in some of Dogen's language, you know, he says, actually, I'll put this away, but he says at the end of the Self-Fulfillment Samadhi, you should know that even if all the Buddhas in the ten directions, as numerous as the sands of the Ganges River, I mean, we read that stuff, it's all, those kinds of phrases are in the sutras again and again and again. But, you know, wait a second, if you take that literally, there are Buddhas in all directions that are as numerous as each grain of sand on the Ganges River. That's a lot. If they together engage the full power of their Buddha-wisdom, so, you know, I think of that as like all the hard drives in all the world and in all the

[39:49]

other worlds together, they could never reach the limit or measure or comprehend the virtue, Dogen says, of one person's saza. So, okay. Yes, Deborah. As you were talking, I thought of how strange modern science is and the findings of physics that I'm beginning to comprehend about string theory and particles and waves. It feels fantastic all of a sudden. It's hard to wrap one's mind around some of the stories. Yeah, I've been trying to read some of that stuff and I'll try and talk about some of it tomorrow night in conjunction with this, but it's, yeah, it's wild. The theoretical physics book I'm reading by Brian Green says that all of the modern theoretical physics leads to the conclusion that there are multiple universes. Universe used to mean everything

[40:51]

that is, but now they say that there are multiple universes, parallel universes. I don't know what that means, but anyway. Yes, Roy. Yeah, you know, all of these stories, there's a part of me that kind of wants to prove it. I think part of that is my background. Like, for example, I think there are a lot of ministers of different religions that sort of have a different view of the world than their own practitioners, and I think that at times, sort of later on, I would think of it as sort of simplistic people wanting to have these magical kinds of stories, and they're basically glorifying bedtime stories. But, you know, I think that that's really, that there's an element of that, but that it's not necessarily a bad thing. That it's sort of my own bias

[41:52]

of, okay, if I can't lock it down, then it doesn't have value. And I think kind of taking a step back from that, that there's a part of us that's nourished by these sorts of things. And we can think of them as metaphorical, or we can think of them as literal, or you can just think of them as stories, sort of like watching a Beatles movie. You know, it just sort of is. You don't want to question it too much. Isn't Beatles kind of a metaphorical fable? I mean, they didn't really live, did they? You know, their effects are still felt. Yeah. So are these stories. Well, at one point, though, about how you use these stories, and you're talking about bedside stories and stuff like that, and, you know, if you use these stories as a kind of, okay, these beings from all these universes, or one being up in the sky, or however you want to put it, is going

[42:53]

to come down and save me and take care of everything, that's a cop-out. This doesn't mean that we don't have to take responsibility for doing the Buddha work here in this conventional realm that we're in. That's really important to say. And yet, we can see this and realize that the possibilities and options and resources are wider than we can yet realize. And I think that's useful, even though we still have to, you know, take care of cleaning the temple when we're finished with this. Douglas. I've tended to see a lot of the imagery in stories in Mahayana sutras as a way of using concrete imagery to express the kind of starlit view of emptiness and dustness about the sun.

[44:00]

When you drop off, when delusion drops off, there's an awareness that there are, nothing is fixed, it's fluid, there are no boundaries, there's no separation. So, this space is not separate from that space, and it is, and this thing is not really separate from that thing. It's either all empty, but this thing is real, but this thing is also an expression of the entire universe. So then, once that's happened, each thing, if a Buddha or a Bodhisattva is something that lives or expresses reality accurately, and each thing is reality and it's expressing it, it is itself a Buddha, and we can talk about little tiny Buddhas sitting on the tip of the grass, but the tip of the grass is a Buddha, it is Buddha. You know, the distant Buddha fields are right here now. They're not separate from us, but

[45:01]

they are over there, but they're not separate from us, they're here now. And, you know, there are koans that have some of the same sort of magical aspects, or some of the really famous ones are things like picking up a pearl from the bottom of the ocean without getting your hand wet, or there's a sailboat over there and why not stop it from sailing away, you know, things like that. And all of those are playing with that concrete image with, at the same time, that realization that it's all continuity. There are no boundaries in a way, the world cannot be reorganized in all sorts of different ways. Yeah. Yep, it's pretty strange. Last thing, Paul. So, along with what both Murray and Douglas just talked about, it seems to me that, you

[46:06]

know, having a sense of wonder is sort of the prime, I don't know who says this, but the prime phenomenon. And so, from what I can tell, it just seems like wonder and belief and sort of magical or mystery, these things seem to be diminishing within recent years, maybe even less, and definitely sustaining the question. But I think it's a very useful thing and it's a powerful thing. And I think it's a bit sad actually to see it become less and less. Yeah, I agree with you. I think the sense of wonder and of the wondrous and of the, the capacity to be amazed is very helpful in practice. And, you know, so I think science

[47:16]

and education and all that conventional reality stuff actually is starting to connect with that. I was just reading this physics article talking about how particles and fields are, you know, not even, that there's not even either of those and that particles inside your body aren't really inside your body and, you know, what? Okay, so anyway, even science is, you know, is allowing us wonder. So, anyway, we'll continue and not know what we're doing on Seva Lama.

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