I vow to taste the truth and not to target it as words. Good morning.

[01:31]

Right at the beginning of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, actually the first three lines of the prologue. So it's really the beginning of the beginning of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. The first few lines go like this. Practicing Zen is difficult but there is a misunderstanding as to why. It is not difficult because it is hard to sit in the cross-legged position or to attain enlightenment. It's difficult because it's hard to keep our mind pure and our practice pure in its fundamental sense. People say that practicing Zen is difficult, but there is a misunderstanding as to why.

[02:48]

It is not difficult because it is hard to sit in the cross-legged posture or to attain enlightenment. It is difficult because it is hard to keep our mind pure and our practice pure in its fundamental sense. So he begins by speaking, I think we can all agree practicing Zen is difficult. Maybe some of you don't feel that way but I think for most of us we feel that way. In fact, we could even expand Suzuki Roshi's, life is difficult. Life is difficult. But he says, practicing Zen is difficult, but there's a misunderstanding as to why. It's not difficult because it's hard to sit in the cross-legged posture or to attain enlightenment.

[03:56]

And, well, that's a surprise, isn't it? We thought that that was the hard part. We thought the hard part was sitting for long hours in the cross-legged posture. We thought it was hard to attain enlightenment. Actually, he doesn't say, it's not hard to do those things. He says, though it's hard, that's not the difficult part. It is not difficult because it is hard to sit in the cross-legged posture or to attain enlightenment. It's difficult because it's hard to keep our mind pure and our practice pure. So I thought I'd try to speak about this key item of purity, what purity is in our practice.

[05:00]

what this means to keep our mind pure and our practice pure. Maybe not so obvious or maybe not exactly what we think, not exactly the usual way we think about purity. Illustrative of this is an incident that I want to relate to you that happened many years ago. I was reminded of it recently because I was visiting my parents, my folks in Southern California. They've been living there for the last few years in an adult community called Leisure World. They live in Leisure World. This is the realm we all aspire to. In our Zen practice, it's the world of leisure, repose and bliss, like a tiger taking to the mountains, like a dragon diving into the waves.

[06:25]

So well there aren't any dragons down in Southern California that I saw anyway, but they live down there and I was visiting them a few months ago and was reminded of this incident. The incident was when they met Suzuki Roshi about 30 years ago or so. Just recently San Francisco Zen Center has a publication called The Wind Bell and a new one just came out like yesterday or the day before and there's this wonderful ... I was thumbing through it. Of course, the first thing you do when you get a wind bell is you look at the pictures. I didn't read any articles but I looked at the pictures and there's a wonderful picture of Suzuki Roshi, and Mel, who looked somewhat different 30 years ago, and a man named Ananda, Claude Dahlenberg, who was a practicer for many years, and also Katagiri and Kolbuncheno.

[07:42]

quite a wonderful photo that must have been taken around this same time that this incident happened with my folks. And the incident was just this, as I say, just this meeting. I think it was brief, I don't remember exactly, but just this brief meeting between my parents and Suzuki Roshi. Though it was brief, it was important for me because I didn't actually know it at the time, but they told me years later that once they had met Suzuki Roshi, they felt okay about my practicing Zen. that their qualms about my practicing, being a Zen practicer, were quieted by having met him. And they did have qualms.

[08:47]

They were quite concerned about this strange thing. They live in Southern California now, but they're mostly New Yorkers, New Yorkers. Actually, they were born in Eastern Europe. My mother was born in Warsaw, and my father was born in some small town in Russia. Dovnya Gebernya, he said it's called. all on the way western tip of Russia, so near Poland. Basically, Eastern European Jewish immigrants who came to the United States when they were four or five years old in the 20s, before fascism arose in Europe, before fascism took hold.

[09:48]

and they both lived on the Lower East Side when they were growing up, and that's where they met. As I like to say, over dead fish they met, because my father worked for his uncle in a fish market, and my grandmother, my mother's mother, would send my mother to go buy fish at the fish market. So they were New Yorkers and thought that practicing Zen in California was a pretty strange thing to do. And if I was interested in religion, why couldn't I become a rabbi? Is there something the matter with being a rabbi? They would ask me. Something the matter with that? If you like religion, why don't you be a rabbi? They would say to me, I had no answer.

[10:56]

So it was important that they met Suzuki Roshi, and it was really quite wonderful that after that they thought, well, it's okay. Whatever this mishugana is doing, it's all right, you know. So when I was down in Leisure World a few months ago, I was talking with my folks about this, and they said, oh yeah, this happened. And then my mother told me something, some aspect of it that was quite interesting, kind of a detail I had forgotten about. My mother said, well, your father was talking with Suzuki Roshi about the luncheonette business. Now, my father had been in the luncheonette business for most of his adult life, and actually I realized just a few days ago, I realized when they met Suzuki Roshi, my father was essentially the same age as I am now, maybe a few years older, but basically the same age.

[12:11]

For those of you, if you come from New York, you know what a luncheonette is, but just in case you don't know what a luncheonette is, A luncheonette is the business that my father was in. They don't have luncheonettes out here in California. It's kind of a conglomerate, so that when you go into the front of the store, there were, you know, candy and, you know, wrapped candy and chewing gum and newspapers and magazines, comic books. And cigarettes, that was a big item. And then further back is a counter and then you get a milkshake or an egg cream or something at the counter. And then there were also boots where you could have lunch. That's why it was a luncheonette. That was the ette part.

[13:16]

So my father was in the luncheonette business for many years with my grandfather and with my uncle. various people. My father is not an educated man, he had to go to work when he was a kid, so that's what he knew was the luncheonette business. So my mother was saying, so your father was talking with Suzuki Roshi about the luncheonette business and it was as though Suzuki Roshi had been in the That was what she said. Now if you've read Crooked Cucumber, you know Suzuki Roshi's biography that David Chadwick compiled, you know that Suzuki Roshi had never been in the luncheonette business. Even if you haven't read Crooked Cucumber, you probably know that he had never been in the luncheonette business.

[14:24]

but nevertheless there it was. He was completely with my parents. He was completely with them wherever they were. So you know that you know in a family sometimes or among good friends or In some small group where you know each other very well, sometimes you develop kind of special language, secret language, or certain phrases come to mean certain things. So in our family, my family now, that is with my wife and kids, we have a phrase, keep it simple, keep it good. Now we got this phrase, this entered our lexicon as it were, courtesy of one of the members of the Berkeley Zen Center, Lori Schley. In the early 80s when Lori and my wife Linda and I were all practicing at Tassajara,

[15:42]

Somehow she must have said that to me or Linda or something. Anyway, that's now a standard phrase in our house, you know. Like if we're going to have dinner or something like that, what should we make? Well, let's keep it simple, keep it good, you know, something like that. So I think it's hard to speak about to talk about Dharma or Zen, simple, keeping it simple, keep it good. Hard to do that without bringing in a lot of, it looks like a lot of complications and a lot of explanations and abbreviations and explications and other shuns of various sorts. But I think we could say, if we want to keep it simple, keep it good, that Dharma, or we could say purity.

[16:47]

Purity is when you're talking with somebody in the luncheonette business, they feel like you have been in the luncheonette business also. That's what purity is, I think, in the sense that Suzuki Roshi meant it. That's what purity is in Zen. And I think it's worth noticing what Suzuki Roshi didn't say as indicating for us what purity is not, or kind of the direction not to go in, so to speak. So Suzuki Roshi did not say, and I think why we find it so funny or kind of humorous, this East meets West. My parents, these Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe meeting Suzuki Roshi, this little Japanese man. Why it's kind of humorous is because Suzuki Roshi did not say, you know, oh, I don't talk about the luncheonette business, that's not pure enough for me, you know.

[18:01]

I only talk about pure, elevated topics of Zen, you know. I only talk about important Zen things. He didn't say that. He didn't say, you know, oh, don't talk to me about the luncheonette business. Go to the zendo, you know. Cross your legs in a cross-legged position, preferably full lotus, and concentrate your mind on no thought. Fortunately, he didn't say that to my parents. I think if he had said that to my parents, their qualms would not have been quieted. Their qualms would have been quantumly enormified. So he went directly to where they were and visited with them exactly where they were.

[19:20]

This is purity or we could say this is Bodhisattva purity. This is the purity of a Bodhisattva. This is the purity of Mahayana, of the great vehicle. And we may think, understanding this, we may think, well, that was okay because Suzuki Roshi was a great Zen master and he could do things like that. But me, I'm not so good. I can't do things like that. I can't act in slick Zen ways and really be top-notch because after all, I'm a bum. Right? You may think that. Sometimes we think those kinds of things. As Kadagiri Roshi used to say, how terrible I am.

[20:25]

Because I'm so terrible, I can't do these things that are really terrific. This is called an escape hatch that we find in our practice, some way to escape from things. But addressing this notion I thought it would be good to try to talk about it in a way, talk about this purity of the Bodhisattva. Talk about what it means to be a Bodhisattva in a way that's closer in, that's close to us. As David mentioned,

[21:28]

the work that I do is psychotherapy work, and I'm quite interested in the relationship between Western psychotherapeutic psychology and Zen practice, a topic that has been occupying me for a number of decades. And they're not the same. Let's make that clear right at the beginning. Psychotherapy is one thing and Zen is another. Very different in many ways. Different in their origins and different in their methods to some degree or in some ways. And yet very interesting kind of kind of relationship between them. Very interesting to see how one, you could say, complements the other or how one resonates with the other, how the meaning of one enhances the other, so on like that. So I want to use an idea that I think of as coming from Western psychotherapeutic tradition to talk about this purity of the Bodhisattva.

[22:43]

And the idea is, it may not be actually just from psychology, it may be, you can tell me, it may be a more wide kind of cultural idea, but I think of it as being from the psychotherapy end of things. Specifically, actually, the people who I think of as most kind of jazzed about this stuff are the Jungians. And the thing that I'm talking about is this idea that there's a spectrum or a range of possibilities. On the one end is understanding something in a very literal and concrete way, and on the other end is understanding something in a very symbolic way. We might say an inner way. So, for example, some of you may know, there's a somewhat popular woman psychologist, her name is Jean Shinoda Bolin, and she's written various books and stuff.

[23:46]

The first book that she wrote, the book that kind of set her groove in some way was a book called Goddesses in Every Woman. So you may have heard of that book and basically the idea behind that book is that she's talking about Greek goddesses and the idea behind the book, though I haven't read the book, feel free to comment on what it's about. I think I understand it. Maybe that's not purity, I'm not sure. Maybe that's stupidity. Anyway, the idea behind the book is, I believe, I'm pretty sure this is true, is that goddesses are not something that somebody imagined 2,000 years ago or 4,000 years ago or whatever. somebody who lives up on Mount Olympus or up on some cloud or something like that.

[24:52]

That's not what a goddess is. What a goddess is, according to Jean Shinoda Bolin, or my belief about what she's saying, is that a goddess is an inner energy or has an inner existence. So, for example, one may be participating in the energy of Athena, or one may be possessed by the energy of, this is not a Greek goddess, but Kali, the feminine, destructive, world-destroying, so on, like that. I may not have it exactly right, but you get the idea. So there's this spectrum. So there's this idea from Western psychology of this spectrum. And then I think we can apply that to this idea of the Bodhisattva.

[25:53]

I'm sure most of you know, but maybe a few of you are new and don't know what a Bodhisattva is. A Bodhisattva is basically, Bodhi means enlightenment or realization. Sattva means being, so it's an enlightenment being. A Bodhisattva is anyone on their way to Buddhahood. very importantly on this so there's a you could say the bodhisattva is on their way to buddhahood which is kind of the wisdom dimension of the bodhisattva then there's the compassion dimension of the bodhisattva the compassion dimension of the bodhisattva is that a bodhisattva is one who helps beings So we often say that the two aspects of Buddhist practice are wisdom and compassion.

[26:59]

Actually, wisdom on the right side, Manjushri on the right, and compassion on the left, Avalokiteshvara on the left, Kuan Yin, Kanzayon. But actually, Now, see if you can dig this. Actually, compassion and wisdom are one thing. They're not two things. They're one thing. And you can see that in Suzuki Roshi and my father in the luncheonette business. This was an expression of his wisdom. of his deep understanding of the way things are. That's why. It wasn't that he thought, well, I'm this wise guy, but I think I'll be compassionate now and talk to this man about the business that he's been in.

[28:00]

He didn't do it that way. It was coming out of his wisdom, but it looks like compassion. It looks like the willingness to be with someone. It looks like kindness. So they're one thing. And that's in the Bodhisattva too. The Bodhisattva is an enlightenment being, so to speak, more and more and more wise, [...] and then you hit the jackpot and you become a Buddha, like that. But a Bodhisattva is, characteristically, the Bodhisattva is the one who helps beings. Oh, well when I said earlier about Manjushri and Avalokiteshvara, technically I'd have to clarify that both of these are Bodhisattvas, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom and the Bodhisattva of Compassion. But in our feeling, in the way we relate to it, often the aspect of the Bodhisattva that we kind of think of very primarily is this compassionate side, this helping side, the one who helps beings.

[29:07]

So, and from that perspective, in some sense, Avalokiteshvara, or Kanzeon, is kind of the quintessential helper of beings. Kanzeon is she who hears the cries of the world. I believe that's the literal translation of kanze on, she who hears the cries of the world and comes and goes to where those cries are coming from. So we have our spectrum and on the more And it's not as though one is more important than the other, the literal is more important than the symbolic, or the symbolic is more important than the literal.

[30:18]

It's just different resonating layers of the same thing. So on the more literal side, she who hears the cries of the world and comes is helping other beings. We should help other beings. As bodhisattvas, that is our, that's the expression of our actual nature. And this literally means other beings, you know, like other beings, like the person next to you, you know, like the, you know, ant crawling along on the ground. There was that wonderful scene in that movie that Brad Pitt was in about Tibet.

[31:28]

What was it called, 13 years in Tibet, something like that? Seven years. some number of years in Tibet, and the monks are about to build something, but then they're all scurrying around, and Brad Pitt or somebody asks, well, what are they doing? And the person explains, well, they're getting all the worms out of the ground, taking them someplace else, because they believe that at one time in the vast immeasurable past. Each worm was my mother, you know, like that. So we should help beings. And as we all know, due to various causes and conditions, we're on a headlong

[32:29]

headlong juggernaut of greed, hate and delusion and killing beings left and right. You know, species are falling away from us like dead skin, except they're not dead skin. Well, they are dead skin. Anyway, they're important and we're forgetting them. So, very importantly, we should take care of beings. So that's at the literal end. Now I want to also speak about it at the inner side, on the symbolic side, metaphoric side, we might say. So what I mean by that is that there is, just like Jean Shinoda Bolin and her goddesses, we could say there is a Bodhisattva within us, inside us.

[33:34]

And that Bodhisattva is dedicated, expresses its nature in helping the beings in us. So who are the beings in us? the beings in us are, you know, some examples of the beings in us. You might say beings in us are like our state of mind, being upset, being angry, being depressed, being whatever. The Bodhisattva within us being in hell sometimes, sometimes we may feel like we are in hell or there is someone within us who is in hell, troubled by some way things are going or by our life or by our thoughts or by the way we feel.

[34:52]

So the Bodhisattva within us hears the cries of those beings and goes to where those cries are. That's what she does. When she gets there, She does not say, oh, well, the reason you feel bad is because you have messed up. Because you're a bad person. Because you're terrible. Because you're stupid. If you hadn't done all of those stupid things, you wouldn't have the problems you have now. Somebody else says that sometimes. but the Bodhisattva of Compassion does not say that. Just as, exactly as, Suzuki Roshi did not say to my father, don't talk to me about the luncheonette business, go down to the zendo and concentrate your mind on no thought, just exactly in that same way,

[36:20]

The inner Bodhisattva goes to where the inner one of us who is in hell is and does not tell that person what they're doing wrong, does not set up a standard, does not set up some way that then we have to judge ourselves. Oh, if I do this, I'm good, and if I do that, I'm bad. No, quite the contrary. This inner Bodhisattva is the one who is willing to be with the one within us who is in hell. The inner Bodhisattva is the one willing to be present. And it's kind of a trick, you know, the way that the translation is, she who hears the cries of the world and comes. Well, you say, okay, well, when she gets there, what does she do? She comes, okay, big deal, so she's here, so what now?

[37:25]

But actually, that's it. She hears the cries of the world and comes, period. The important thing is that she comes. The important thing is that she is willing to be there. The important thing is that I am willing to be there with myself. That you are willing to be there with yourself, wherever yourself happens to be. If it's in the luncheonette business, luncheonette business, you know. If it's in hell, hell. If you're having a good time, great, have a good time. This is the purity of the Bodhisattva, is that willingness to be present. and not go somewhere else and not demand something else.

[38:32]

You know, in the Sandokai, it says, don't set up standards on your own. Not setting up some standard. Well, you're only okay if you do this. You're only okay if you sit Zazen for 40 minutes and you don't move. Excluding eyelashes. You're allowed to move your eyelashes, but nothing else. And if you don't do that, you're no good. We have that kind of idea about Zen practice. Maybe not so silly in such a literal way. But we think, if we don't do this, then we're no good. If we do do that, then we're no good. If we do this, do that, so on and so forth. all of the demands that we put on ourself. But Suzuki Roshi didn't demand anything of my father. He didn't. And things worked out pretty good, I think.

[39:33]

So you may have heard in Zen circles the phrase Don't seek elsewhere. That's what's being referred to. Don't seek elsewhere. Don't look for something else. And of course, it's very ironic, of course, you know, or ironic or funny. Because we think, well, wait a minute now. What do you mean, don't seek elsewhere? That's why I'm here, is to seek elsewhere. Because, you know, like I said earlier, you know, what I've got now, this is no good. I'm no good. I've got to improve myself. I've got to go elsewhere to improve myself and be a better person and be a Zen man or woman or so on and so forth, you know, like that. So don't seek elsewhere.

[40:45]

So Dogen says, past thoughts in themselves were already realization, but because you were seeking elsewhere, this is literally what he says in this translation of this passage of I think it's the bendowa, the negotiation of the way, or in Shouhaku Okamura's translation, it's called Wholehearted Way. Wholehearted Way is a very wonderful title. I think maybe you can get the gist of what I'm talking about. It's really about wholehearted practice, being wholehearted about things, wholeheartedly present. Anyway, in the wholehearted way, or someplace, Dogen says, past thoughts in themselves were already realization, but because you were seeking elsewhere, you thought and said thoughts could not be realization.

[41:54]

It's a very peculiar sort of thing to say. He says past thoughts were already realization, and the past part has to do with the context of the rest of the passage. We could just say any old thought that you have is already realization. But because you are seeking elsewhere, because you said, oh, this thought's no good, luncheonettes are no good, being in hell is no good, this is no good, that's no good, because you were seeking elsewhere, you thought and said, thoughts could not be realization. The emphasis is completely not where you'd expect it to be. The emphasis, we expect the emphasis to be on, well, how do I get to have better thoughts? That's what we want. We don't want the crappy old thoughts that we've got now, right? You don't want to be sitting here listening to the crappy old lecture I'm giving you now.

[43:01]

You want better thoughts, better ones. That's what we want. We want the better ones. Where are they? And there are a lot of people who are very happy to sell you the better ones at a small fee or sometimes a large fee. They will sell you the better thoughts and then you can have better thoughts. but it doesn't really matter. It doesn't do any good. It doesn't help, essentially. In its fundamental sense, it doesn't help. Purity in its fundamental sense is not having better thoughts. It doesn't have anything to do with that. It's the willingness to actually hear the cries and arrive and be present. and not seek elsewhere. Well, let's see here.

[44:07]

I'll try to, I had a couple more remarks here, so I'll try to be brief, somewhat brief about them. So I looked up purity in the American Heritage Dictionary, pure. And pure, the first definition in the American Heritage Dictionary is having a homogeneous or uniform composition. Doesn't that sound just like a dictionary? It's exactly the way dictionaries sound, semi-colon, not mixed. having a homogeneous or uniform composition, not mixed. Zen is a very peculiar way of thinking about things. The usual way we think about that is, is that not mixed, you know, is that you get things purer and purer and purer, like ghee, you know.

[45:21]

Something I also don't know anything about, but I believe that I believe that ghee is when you boil the butter and you get the milk solids away. Then you have this pure butter, pure ghee, not mixed, uniform, homogeneous composition, not mixed. That's our usual idea of purity, of what being pure is. But the Zen idea of purity, and I believe what Suzuki Roshi meant by it's hard to keep our mind pure and our practice pure in its fundamental sense, is exactly the opposite of that. Instead of excluding things, instead of excluding the milk solids, purity means including it, including everything. So it's not mixed, just like the universe is not mixed, because it's one universe.

[46:31]

There's no mixture. It's just one thing, you know? Not mixed, you know, the editors of the American Heritage Dictionary, they were, the assumption behind not mixed is a dualistic assumption. It means you can mix things. It means there are different things to mix. But the purity that Suzuki Roshi was talking about, I believe, is one mind purity, encompassing purity, wide purity. Like he used to say, if you want to train your ox, give him a wide pasture. That's the purity that he's referring to. We don't leave anything out. So a powerful example of this that came to me was Joanna Macy.

[47:34]

Some of you may know Joanna Macy as a Buddhist. Is she particularly related to Berkeley Zen Center? Joanna Macy. I think of her as being in Berkeley somewhere, but... All good things are in Berkeley, so she must be here someplace, but I don't know. Anyway, so Joanna Macy is a Buddhist practitioner and a, I think we could say a political activist, anti-nuclear political activist. Again, this is different levels. It's very interesting, levels, different, you know, symbolic, literal, concrete, metaphoric. So she's an anti-nuclear activist, very strongly objecting to nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants, and she recommended

[48:45]

at one event or sometime, I don't know the details of it, but I know that she recommended to other activists that as part of their activism, they adopt a nuclear power plant. This is, do you get that? This is somebody who strongly disagrees, objects, is upset by nuclear power plants. And she doesn't know it, or I don't know if she would say it, but as an expression of this one-mind purity, she is able to say, she's able to take in the very thing that she is finding most poisonous and adopt it.

[49:49]

That's she who hears the cries of the world and comes. Same thing. So we can do that with a nuclear power plant or we can do that with the nuclear power plant of our own emotional life. We can adopt that. We can take that in. We can be willing to be with that. Even though it looks like, yuck, the worst. The last thing I'd want to be, I wouldn't be caught dead in a nuclear power plant, you know, so on and so forth, like that. so

[50:55]

So I thought I would close or end by speaking just a little bit about, so to speak, the method of practice, the method of cultivation of what I'm calling one mind purity or big mind purity. How does one cultivate such a generous, how do I cultivate such a generous state of mind, such an open-hearted, whole-hearted attitude. And there are many ways to speak about it. One way to speak about it is that there is no method That's simple, a very simple way.

[52:24]

No method, period. There is no particular how. How do I do it? How do I do it is often a way of seeking elsewhere. It's often a way of saying, how do I get to be somebody else who then could practice? But for better or worse, we're stuck with who we are. for better and worse, we're stuck with who we are. So I was thinking and feeling that the three treasures are our method of cultivation, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Buddha, Dharma and Sangha are based on confidence or belief in or trusting our true nature. Now once you get into, if you're new here you think oh it's a lot of strict stuff and you can't move and it's all very serious and so on and so forth, but after a while you really get to see that Buddhism is very

[53:41]

optimistic, kind of sweet and optimistic idea of human beings. And there's not really a problem except the ones that we make. We make a problem, we make another problem. So all we have to do is take away the problems and then things are okay because basically we're okay. It's kind of an idea, you might say. what is, I think, Trungpa used to call it, basic goodness. Sometimes pretty hard to find. I admit, pretty hard to find sometimes, but a real trust and belief in, confidence in, faith in, that's shraddha, that's the first of the five cardinal virtues is faith. confidence in our own true nature, our own good nature.

[54:49]

That's the root of Buddha and Dharma and Sangha. And by virtue of Buddha and Dharma and Sangha we just keep trying We just keep trying to try. We just keep doing. Like Yoda said, right, there's no such thing as trying. What did he say to Luke Skywalker? Don't try, just do. We just keep doing it, you know. And Sangha is an encouragement because then there are other folks like us We say, oh, other people are here too. And Dharma is an encouragement because sometimes the rain of Dharma feels very sweet on our face, very refreshing to feel the wetness of the Dharma raining upon us of the teaching.

[55:57]

And Buddha, we see someone as an example, like my parents and Suzuki Roshi, you know, They were converted to Buddhism. They didn't know, but they were converted to Buddhism. And why? Because they met a Buddha. You see someone and you say, wow, that's terrific. Very encouraging. And it doesn't have to be some Zen person or such as like that. As you know, it could be the bus driver Louis Armstrong or anybody. Very inspiring. So then we try and we try and we do and we do and mostly what happens as a result of that is failure. which is very good to know about.

[57:03]

It's very helpful to know about that, so to speak, in advance, or kind of in the process, because otherwise we think that we're supposed to be successful. If we don't realize that, then we create these you know, standards, oh, I'm not being successful, I'm not doing this, or gee, I just acted, oh, I was just unkind to that person, and I'm such a bum, and I'm so self-centered, and just because I was upset and angry is no good reason to be so nasty and so on. You know, so mostly we, We fail, and then it's very hard. I always used to say, you know, the dawn is the person who hits the bells. And I always used to say, it's very hard for a Dhawan to make one mistake. Because as soon as you make one mistake, then you're so occupied with having, oh God, I hit the bell at the wrong time.

[58:06]

Of course, you forget the next bell, right? So similarly, we fail and then we're so occupied with having failed and are so busy listing all the failures that we have. accomplished in the week, my failure of the week, that we forget to just keep doing it. So we mostly fail, but that's because That's not because we're really that bad, generally speaking, but that's because it is hard to keep our mind pure and our practice pure in its fundamental sense. It's very hard to do. Even Suzuki Roshi said so. It's hard to do these things. So we continue to try in our own flawed, unreproducible way.

[59:13]

Thank you.

[59:21]

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