Good morning. Looks like the sun is trying to break through on this spring morning and I appreciate that. Can you hear me okay? Yes, good. So this morning I'm going to be continuing the series of talks on teachings that I felt were basic to Sojin Roshi's approach to Zen. Last week Carol quite effectively spoke about Sojin's teaching of not treating anyone or

[01:00]

anything like an object. Today what I'd like to talk to you about is the principle of alignment. Now I start with a couple of thoughts before I launch into quotations and citations. First of all to encourage you to sign up for the practice period that we have that's beginning on Saturday May 8th with a session and it goes through Sunday June 20th at the end of a three-day session and all of the information maybe Ellen can put that in the in the chat. The link is on the PCC website

[02:05]

including the registration form and all the details for what we're doing. This practice period the reason I'm talking about it aside from the fact that I'm trying to plug it today is that the idea of this practice period is really to realign our practice. We haven't had, I mean actual practice is going very well, there's nothing missing, there's nothing wrong with it, but we haven't had practice period since assets of practice in that ended in November of 2019 and so we missed it all last year and we're renewing it this year even though it's still in an online context. So because of that we're not going to have a head student or shuso the way we ordinarily would and hopefully we'd have that in

[03:08]

the fall and we're going to conduct this practice period online as we begin to consider how to how to reopen as immunity seems to be spreading at least in this country if not in others. So the emphasis for this practice period is going to be on first of all on zazen and then on basic Buddhism on core principles, core Dharma systems of basic Buddhism that I think it's really helpful for everybody to to have a sense of and I'll be doing most of the teaching leading the practice period but getting help from from senior students and teachers here as well with some of the lectures

[04:13]

and talks and really encourage you to please sign up particularly particularly everybody particularly the newer students is a chance to really ground your practice and to have an opportunity to study together these really basic principles of Buddhism. When I came to Berkeley Zen Center in the in the early 80s Sogen Roshi was quite emphasizing these. He did that less so I think in more recent years but he was really covering the breadth of basic Buddhism and that at that time and it gave those of us who are around it gave us a really wonderful grounding. So please think about your participation think about what's realistic for you and if you have any questions about your participation please

[05:20]

you know you write or talk to me or to Jerry Oliva and we can align our practice together. The other question of alignment that I feel it's incumbent on me to speak about is what is and what is not struggling for alignment in in our country, in our society. So this week we had a verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin for the police officer for the murder of George Floyd and I

[06:27]

certainly did not feel celebratory when that verdict came in. I felt a kind of symbolic release of my held breath perhaps but there are all these every day we see not just murders by police of young African-Americans but also people walking into different settings and and shooting people. Just a kind of madness and disalignment in our country that is very alarming. So in the context of the Chauvin verdict one could

[07:34]

make the case that justice has been done but this is justice in a retributive fashion not in a restorative fashion. We cannot restore George Floyd's life. We cannot restore the damage to his family and his community nor can we restore whatever the actions and whatever the the impulses were that drove Derek Chauvin to kneel on his neck for all that time and press the life out of him nor the effect on his family. So it's a real

[08:35]

question of how do we come into alignment as a society, as people. I think that is the message of an approach to justice that is seen as restorative justice but that is very rare in our culture. I wish it were more widely distributed. I wish those values were widely available and I think it behooves us to take responsibility for that. So I do not have an answer about what alignment looks like or could be accomplished in that case but I felt that needed to say

[09:58]

something. So I wanted to read you a couple of things. This is a story from the wonderful collection some of the it's one of the first Zen books that many of us read in the in the early 60s. 101 Zen stories which is collected transcribed by Nyogen Sanzaki and Paul Reps and this collection of both of ancient stories and of relatively modern ones. So this one is called Accurate Proportion and it is in reference to Sendō Rikyō the 16th century tea master. So Sendō Rikyō wished to hang a flower basket on a column. He asked a carpenter to help him directing the man to place it a little higher or lower to the right or left

[11:11]

until he found exactly the right spot. That's the place Sendō Rikyō said finally. The carpenter to test the master marked the spot and then pretended he had forgotten. Was this the place? Was this the place perhaps? The carpenter kept asking pointing to various places on the column. But so accurate was the tea master's sense of proportion that it was not until the carpenter reached the identical spot again that his location was approved. So day after day, year after year, I think many of us watched Sojin Roshi enter the Sendō in the half light of early morning.

[12:18]

He approached the altar slowly and quietly and he paused for a moment to take in what was arrayed before him. The Buddha, Prajnaparamita, candles, flowers, incense or water bowls, small Bodhisattva figures, memorial cards for the recently deceased. With a slow and sure touch, Sojin very carefully set all these figures and objects in what he felt to be the proper alignment. To his painterly eye, each thing on the altar should occupy its own space. Everything else. And I think that in his example of practice,

[13:31]

without explaining, he showed us how we can create that kind of harmony in our own harmony and alignment in our own life. Suzuki Roshi wrote, the reason everything looks beautiful is because it is out of balance, but its background is always in perfect harmony. Sojin was acutely aware of the actuality and the beauty of things falling out of balance. I felt that he was constantly demonstrating how to create a background of harmony, of alignment. Not just in arranging the altar, but how to align our body to sit like a Buddha.

[14:41]

This is what we think of when we sit in Zazen, what we are manifesting is Buddha mudra. We are placing our bodies in the position of the Buddha, and thereby, as Dogen Zenji speaks, we are actually manifesting Buddha nature. We are becoming Buddha by placing our bodies in this Buddha mudra. So Sojin Roshi was showing us how to align our body in Zazen, and how to live in a way that's aligned with the causes and conditions of our world. Actually, I found a passage from a lecture where he speaks of this. I'll read you, it's quite short.

[15:45]

There's a certain kind of order that things have on a table. Often when I come to the table, I adjust things, not according to a fixed order, but so that each one has its space in relation to all the pieces, and not just focusing on one piece, and disregarding the rest as just garbage. When I put my cup down, I put my cup down in relation to the objects around it, so that each thing has space and balances with all the others. I think that comes from the practice of always being aware of the relationship between objects. I guess I developed a sense of relationship in Zen practice, or just developed. Suzuki Roshi was like that too. I would hazard a guess that actually,

[16:52]

the elements of understanding those relationships are also what drew him to Zen. As an artist, as a painter, you're always thinking of color, and objects, and space. I feel that, and you're also thinking, well, in different arts, you're thinking about relationship. If you're a dancer or a musician, you're thinking of movement, and space, and sound, and space. My own experience as a musician is that when things are really working, when the music is really alive, each note has its own space, and also has the proper amount of silence around it,

[18:07]

and is in relationship to each other's note. Also, that is how the relationships ideally exist among the people who are actually playing the music, that each one is cooperating, each one is finding their own sonic space that creates a whole. This is what we do in Zazen. We've been really wrestling with this for a year on Zoom, and I think we're actually doing really well. In the Zendo, we physically manifest the sense of alignment, and each person sitting next to each other is

[19:08]

supporting each other. I read a poem, or I thought of a poem today. It's, well, let me say, it's also important to realize that this is one side. You could say, as Suzuki Roshi says, to live in the realm of Buddha nature means to die as a small being, moment after moment. When we lose our balance, we die, but at the same time, we also develop ourselves, we grow. And this is where he says, whatever we see is changing, losing its balance. The reason everything looks beautiful is because it is out of balance, but its background is always

[20:11]

in perfect harmony. This is how everything exists in the realm of Buddha nature, losing its balance against the background of perfect balance. So that's one side. And it's also true that this principle of order or of alignment is not necessarily an absolute. It's very interesting. And some of you went to meetings, went to lots of meetings with Sojin Roshi in the last half of 2020. And he was always completely, if you were like this, he was really irritated if you were not in the frame this way. He wanted you right in the middle

[21:12]

of the frame. That was his sense of order. And his sense of order on the altar was a kind of, I think there was a symmetry to it. And it was very interesting because when I compose photographs, what I like is actually, my eye moves towards an asymmetry. And that has, for me, that is something that's dynamic and that appeals to my sense of order. And so we have symmetry and asymmetry. Is one of them right and one of them wrong? We have so-called beauty and so-called ugliness. Are these absolutes?

[22:15]

I was thinking of a poem this morning that probably some of you know. It's a short poem and I'm just going to read the first half of it. It's called The Anecdote of the Jar by Wallace Stevens. I placed a jar in Tennessee and round it was upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness surround that hill. The wilderness rose up to it and sprawled around no longer wild. Now, there's tremendous amount of ambiguity about the meaning and argumentative interpretation about the meaning of this poem.

[23:23]

But what's interesting there is, you know, Suzuki Roshi says, everything is beautiful because it is out of balance, but its balance is always in perfect harmony. That is one way of seeing the world. What Wallace Stevens is saying here is actually that the wilderness is not a background of stillness and harmony. The wilderness is wild and somewhat random or unfolding according to its own principles that we can't understand. When we take a jar that we've manufactured and put it in the middle, then all of a sudden that takes dominion over the space.

[24:27]

But the fact is, that's just our perception. You know, or as Bernie Glass, I finally I realized today that, you know, Bernie Glassman, the phrase that he borrows from The Big Lebowski, where he says, that's just like your opinion, man. That's a condensation of Yogachara teaching. So, to see that jar as holding dominion over the wilderness in Tennessee is a matter of our perception. Do you follow me? It's a matter of our perception. Now, you know, to

[25:36]

a bird or a fox or a snake, it's very unlikely they wouldn't see it that way. They wouldn't see the jar as an organizing principle for the wilderness. But in our human perspective, given our habits and the causes and conditions, we tend to see that. So I think that this is also, to me, a deeper dive into Sojourn's idea of practice was, yes, he aligned things as they, and gave everything its space, because that was his agency. That was him taking response, that was him recognizing his perception

[26:50]

and taking responsibility for his perception, and helping those things find their place in the context of his perception. He might have left them where they were, but that didn't accord with, actually didn't accord with his instinct for creativity. And that instinct for creativity is also deeply imprinted in our practice of Zazen. We think that Zazen is just doing the same thing over and over again, but actually Zazen is placing ourselves in an alignment so that anything can happen

[27:51]

in that moment. Placing ourselves there, opening ourselves, and seeing what creative explosion takes place. So we can look at it from the standpoint, I think this is very interesting, we can look at it from the standpoint of everything exists in a background of harmony, or also everything exists in a background of wildness. And we have those aspects, those are aspects of our existence when seen from different directions. And in Zazen, to me, I think we manifest both of those capacities.

[28:59]

Capacities. Suzuki Roshi says, um, you have, he says, you be the boss of you. Which is not bossing things around, it's actually recognizing that your perception and your mind is, has some agency with regards to what you see, what you do, and what you say. Says when you do things in the right way, at the right time, everything else will be organized.

[30:04]

So that's the perception, that's the perspective of the jar in Tennessee. You are the boss, when the boss is sleeping, everyone is sleeping. When the boss does something right, everyone will do something right, and at the right time. That's one side. The other side is the wonderful profusion of wildness. Those capacities that we have within us, which are intellectual, they're artistic, they're emotional. And, uh, uh, what he says the best thing to do, this is, uh,

[31:07]

when he talks about control, he says the best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. In a sense, to encourage the wildness and the randomness. In ourselves. So then they will be the troll in its wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large spacious meadow is the way to control them. So it is with people. First, let them do what they want and watch them. This is the best policy. So just watching. It's the moment when Sojan approaches the altar and looks and just watches. Well, how have these things, how have these things arrayed themselves this morning? Best one is to watch them, just to watch them without trying to control them.

[32:16]

Okay. But the context of this passage in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind also is control. So that is an aspect of it as well. You don't just throw it out the window. You don't let people do what they want in ways that are destructive or harmful. People who the police officers stood by and watched Derek Chauvin kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, that kind of watching is out of alignment with the universe because it doesn't take into consideration that all life is precious.

[33:20]

So there's a context for watching. Context for watching, I think, is, if you will, universal love, universal respect. Sojan loved all those things on the altar. As I'm going through, I've been going to his office for the last month and a half. I'm going to sort things out. I'm very aware of the placement of things that he located in his office and that he put each one of those in that place.

[34:25]

So before I move them, I'm going to think about them and try to see what it was that he thought was the appropriate space for that photograph or that print or that little statue or that nonsensical object that had been sitting on his desk for 15 years. And they have a kind of sacredness for me. But they don't necessarily have a kind of permanence. And each of us has to come and make our own world in whatever space we inhabit. And then the most difficult thing of all is to create alignment in our society.

[35:37]

And it's particularly difficult to create alignment in a society that has roots in destruction, that has roots in genocide, that are hard for some of us to admit. But I think first we have to, what we can learn in Zazen is to admit those flaws, admit the flaws and deficiencies that each of us has. And to be really honest with ourselves and honest with each other

[36:49]

as a way of establishing our sense of connection and alignment with our sisters and brothers, whether they're family members or co-workers or sangha members. And as we learn that, I think we have the potentiality of extending that kind of honesty and painful introspection more widely so that we can find an alignment and at the same time allow what is necessarily wild to thrive.

[37:52]

So, I think that's where I will end for today and leave time for comments and discussion. Thank you. Thank you, Ozan. You know the drill, y'all. If you have a question, please raise your hand and I will call on you. Let's do this slowly so that I have time to pin you. I'll go with Kit Robinson. Please unmute yourself. Thank you, Blake. Thank you, Ozan. Last night, I was listening to a record of a pianist playing a song by Thelonious Monk called Ugly Beauty. It's a very lyrical, moving song in his typical idiosyncratic way of composing. And I meditated on the title,

[39:06]

Ugly Beauty. What is Ugly Beauty? And I thought about Monk's life in which he experienced a lot of ugliness, including the effects of white supremacy and police brutality on numerous occasions. And then, of course, the fact of his music, which is very complex and original and sometimes discordant to the untrained ear. And if you listen to it long enough, it becomes very beautiful. And so I wrote a two-line poem that goes like this. In Monk's Ugly Beauty, the last word is beauty. Thank you, Kit. A poet's sensibility.

[40:08]

When I was a kid, like 15, and started listening to folk music, it was a record of gospel music by Blind Willie Johnson. And I tried a number of times to listen to it. I could not listen to it. His voice was gravelly. It sounded like from the bottom of the barrel or something. And I found it scary. And as years turned, I find it ineffably beautiful. But at that moment, it was too much for me. The thing that I, you know, I'm grateful I didn't give up on it. You know, I didn't sort of dismiss it. I just kept going back and finding that beauty. Thank you.

[41:23]

Ben, I invite you to unmute yourself and ask a question. Hozan. Yes. Thank you for your talk. I found the topic really resonated with me. I found in Zazen recently, and I've experienced this before to lesser or greater extents, this feeling of crookedness, and partially because of a shoulder that I've been having some soreness with. And I really feel the pull away from alignment that's happening. And then I find myself very, you know, coming back to my vow and my intention to align and really adjusting a lot, realigning a lot. And sitting this morning, it became apparent to me that that's, you know, our practice everywhere, like, you know, finding that alignment. And sort of the parts of the body,

[42:38]

you know, aligning different parts of my body and trying to care for them and put them in the right order is the way I want to help others and interact with all things. And I was really going back to my mudra. So I guess my question is about my mudra, because I've heard someone say, maybe Sojin, maybe someone else, that it can be this sort of barometer of your Zazen posture. And I find that it pulls a certain direction because of this shoulder issue. And I have the sense that holding that mudra is attempting to hold everything in alignment. So I wonder if you could speak something about our mudra. The mudra is that it translates as the cosmic mudra. And, you know, it's, your thumb tips are just touching. And your hand, your left hand is resting on your right palm. And it's kind of a

[43:46]

half circle of fingers. And it's also holding a, to me, it's holding a space of receptivity, that when you're sitting like this, you are, you're open for something to fill that space. So it is an important barometer. When we're tired, our thumbs are collapsed. If we're tense, we push them together, all those things. We have this, we know about this in Zazen instruction. And I think that we have to find the right balances in our body. That on the one hand, there's a general,

[44:50]

general instructions for our posture, for our alignment, for how we sit, for how we hold our body, for how we hold our mudra. And one thing that Sogen said is that we're constantly making minute adjustments of that. And I think that part of the adjustment also is that one has to find the balances that are appropriate for one's own body. It's not one size fits all. You know, we're not trying to turn out cookie cutter postures in the Zendo. It's great if we have an idea of what alignment we want, and we can do that, that's fine. But, you know, many of us, as we're getting older, we're finding, you know, it's like, oh, now I can't, because of my knees,

[45:54]

I can't sit in half lotus. And I have to honor, we have to honor the, honor the demands of our body at the same time as experimenting with whether, whether you can approach that model. And you have to be very careful not to force yourself into that posture. That that's, to me, a very important thing. That's where one can do oneself harm. I don't think you can, I think the mudra is not problematic in that same way, the same way that maybe your knees and hips might be. But yes, and sometimes we feel lazy, may not want to hold the mudra, but come back to the mudra.

[46:56]

Just because that's our form, not because it's like the only way to hold your hands. Thank you, Hossam. I had this sense while I was adjusting my posture that like, me trying to take care of each element of my body is not, without forcing it, but with holding it accountable in some way to show up is, is not different from saving all beings. Well, I don't want to take more time, but no, that's right. But it's also, that's good. Because your body is a cooperative. You've got the leg beings and the finger beings and the liver beings and the brain beings and all those beings. If one of them is out of whack, the whole deal doesn't work well. So they're all cooperating. Ross Blum, I invite you to unmute yourself and ask a question.

[48:14]

Uh, let's see. Good morning, Hossam. Morning. You, you produce a collection of music called Everything is Broken. And I'm wondering how that may or may not relate to your talk around balance. As a practice. I think that what appealed to me about that song was a resonance with this teaching of Ajahn Chah's, where he had this, he had a favorite cup and ceramic cup. And he said, I love this cup because I know that it's already broken. You know, that, that impermanence is law. And I think we see,

[49:23]

we see the brokenness in our bodies. We see brokenness in our, in our lives. We see brokenness in our society. What comes to mind, this is wonderful. Japanese art. I'm sure, I'm pretty sure you know it, you know, where they take broken cups and they mend them with gold or silver. And, you know, like everything Japanese, it, it, it gets overdone, right? It's like going too far, but it's like, they honor the brokenness. And I think we can honor the, that song is about

[50:24]

honoring the brokenness in ourselves. Yeah. I like that. In our society. Yeah. Thanks so much. I see Heiko, Helen, and Sean. Heiko, I invite you to unmute yourself and ask a question. Thank you, Hozon Sensei. Very inspiring and interesting talk. A couple of comments, and I'd like to talk about that word dominion. The order of things reminds me of a story of Suzuki Roshi walking behind someone in Kinhin, I imagine. And that person straightened a photograph. And as Suzuki Roshi went by, he just put it back to crooked. And another reference, I spoke with Sojin Roshi about the, the great, this is out of, I think 101 stories, actually, the great master finally retired to the mountain,

[51:31]

and it became strangely excellent, talking about the mountain and how this word dominion that comes from that poem. And when I first read the poem, I kind of equated, I'm an old white guy, kind of equated white, equated dominion to this kind of unity that comes around objects when they enter, as opposed to a certain kind of blindness that I would attribute to the poem, to the poet. That dominion is a white guy's kind of thing. And that order and everything being really nice is dominion is a wake up call. And he was trying to point out that I got that when that was there, suddenly it was recognized and everything was recognized by it in being. But that dominion thing is aside from what you've been directing us to in thought. And also, I think it's just an old white guy word. I wonder if you could address that.

[52:33]

I think that's exactly right. And I think it's also, it's really interesting, because this is a jar in Tennessee. Tennessee is a Native American word. Tennessee is a Native American place. So I think this is, you know, I don't think that that while Stephen was advocating dominion, I think he was talking about the way our minds work. And I think you could say in this poem, what he's talking about, how we make reality according to what we think. And that's not reality. And that's what dominion is. Dominion is power over. So the power over in that perception that everything in that on that hill

[53:42]

is surrounding and oriented towards that jar. You know, I think he's alluding to the fact, yes, that's a perception. And yes, that can be really problematic. So you saw him as enlightened on that point, I think. I think so. And there's a lot of argument about it, you know, very, it's a it's a deeply ambiguous poem. Well, it woke me up. So maybe it did contain that enlightenment delivered by the poet, it's hard to say. Like jazz, we wake up sometimes, and it's only been a lot of noise. Thank you very much. Helen C, please unmute yourself and ask a question. Hi, Hozan. Morning. So the conversation has sort of moved on a bit as it does. But I think I'll still share what I

[54:48]

was was on my mind. When you were talking about the mudra. I've been working with this idea of flow and letting things flow in and out. And so I'm really enjoying this idea of receptiveness, and also this idea of allowing things to go. And so with the two hands, there's that that possibility and, and I just kind of experience it as it comes through. So I just wanted to share that, that, share that with everyone. Thank you. To me, this, this mudra is, you've touched on both points. It's a dynamic receptivity. What just happened here? You know, the, the openness of the hands that kind of half cupping is the receptivity to

[55:49]

hold everything and the position of the, of the two thumbs, it's like, uh, kind of like that painting of, of God and Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling where their fingers are just barely touching. And it's a dynamic energy that's flowing between them. We get to do that constantly, but it's great. And also it's circles within circles. That's the other thing that I like the way I picture it is like, I'm creating a circle with my arm and I'm creating this half circle with my hands. And it's like opening to everything and your whole body. Also, your posture, your upright posture is a posture of unguarded receptivity. So you face it like a newborn baby who was just learning to walk, who walks

[56:56]

with her belly forward into the world, uh, fearless. I see a couple more hands. Maybe that's, we'll take, let's take those and get up. Uh, Ken Powelson, please unmute yourself and ask a question. Good morning, Hazan. Thank you. Ken, you've changed. He does. Katie. Hi. Um, as you were talking about Sojin's, uh, practice of shifting things on the just so, uh, I was thinking of my mother in the last five months of her life was bed bound and she always liked things to be just in a certain place, which was always very mysterious because it didn't actually add up to order sometimes. But, um, she, at that,

[58:00]

in that period, she wanted her bedside table to be just so. So, I mean, these were the things that were most important was her call button or tissues, the remote for the TV, some water. Those were the essentials. I don't remember, you know, things, but, you know, people would like use that table and put things on it. And then I'd come in, she'd be like, can you put this over there and that over there and that over there. And then she would just, after I'd done it all and kind of arranged her table, then she would go and she would move everything quarter inch that way and a quarter inch this way. Um, and I think it was, you know, of course her, of course her space, um, and her autonomy. Um, and I'm wondering, you know, I kind of wonder, like, I know that sometimes the folks who take care of the altar would be taken aback that, you know, Sojin thought that they had done it wrong or something like that. Or me with my frustration with my mom doing this every day or several times a day of like, okay, like, why does it have to be a quarter inch

[59:03]

this way? Um, I guess I'm just wondering if you can kind of speak to the interpersonal side of this as well. Well, you know, that was your mother's world. That was the scope of, that really was her immediate world. And so, uh, that completely understandable. Uh, I'm sure that many of us have had the experience of going into Sojin's office, finding his table, uh, piled with seemingly random stacks of paper, putting something down on top of one of them and him saying, don't put that there. You know, uh, and I think it's really important not, it's really, to me, it was, I just always tried to learn

[60:13]

and not to feel like I had made a mistake. It's just, there's something I'm not seeing here that he's seeing. What is that? And the same thing I think goes very much in, uh, in the context of the, of the altar. It's like I could, I could rearrange, I could arrange things and he could come and rearrange them, you know, and it's like, the effort I think that I made was to try to see what it was that he was seeing and also really to see where I might be having a reaction, a self-clinging reaction, like, oh, he's judging me or I did it wrong or anything extra than the fact that

[61:19]

it was just a realignment of these objects. And of course we all have that, you know, uh, and that's, I just always took that as an, as an opportunity to, to work with myself. But I know it's a conundrum. I know that there are people who are really thrown in the context of Zen practice by so-called corrections, uh, and find that very hard to absorb. And this is what, to me, what I want to be in is alignment. I wanted to be in alignment with him. And so I wanted to know what it was that he was seeing by way of alignment.

[62:23]

And I never discussed, I mean, we, we would have these discussions about, we had some discussions about framing and aesthetics and he had his vision and I had mine and that was okay. I just, the alignment was knowing what his was, having a sense of what mine was and knowing when was the moment to do one or the other. So for example, when you go to another temple, and I've had a lot of experience in this, um, all the forms were a little different. Sometimes leave the altar, they turn right. Sometimes leave the altar, they turn left, you know, all these various little things. And my effort for alignment is to do the practice that is the practice of that temple, not to do the practice

[63:25]

that I feel I've learned as the correct practice, because it's just as, as, uh, the whole thing, all these practices are what Bernie Glassman referred to as MSU, making stuff up, you know, uh, and that goes along with the fact that they're projections of our mind, but it behooves us to align ourselves and to understand what the projections of people's minds are, and then we have to decide what we want to do about them. Thank you. Thank you. Peter Enyart and friend. Who's that sitting next to you? It's my son, Alex. Hey, Alex. Hi. Hi. Thank you for the talk. Um, just one thing, the discussion with Heiko on the topic of what

[64:33]

white guys see when they look at a pot in the wilderness reminded me of a quote by Chief Luther Standing Bear that says, we did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding streams with tangled growth as wild. Only to the white men was nature a wilderness, and only to him was the land infested with wild animals and savage people. To us it was tame, earth was bountiful, and we were surrounded with the blessings of the great mystery. Not until the hairy man from the east came, and with brutal frenzy heaped injustices upon us, and the families that we loved, was it wild for us? And the very animals of the forest began fleeing from his approach. Then it was the wild west for us began. Oh, that's another perspective. That's really helpful. And there's a very interesting book by Gary Snyder called The

[65:45]

Wilderness. Yes, there was no concept of wilderness. So you're, you're completely correct that this in itself is also a colonial view. Uh, at the same time, maybe wild is not, is not the right word. But from the perspective of our, our own thinking and intellectual training, uh, what we try, what we often do is to refine out what we call wild,

[66:46]

and to suppress it. And so what I'm suggesting is, uh, how do we honor that, um, without relegating it to a subordinate position? Uh, and we could just say, this is a word that we use. Uh, it's not really wild. As you look at it, there's tremendous order, interdependence, uh, all of that. Uh, and I think from the point of view of Wallace Stevens' poem, again, he's coming from the perspective of dominion. He's coming, if you will, from a, a dominant and colonialist perspective that looks at

[67:52]

this, uh, countryside in Tennessee as wild. And so that, that's part of the ambiguity. So, um, no, I, I really hear that. Uh, and I think it's a, it's a very rich discussion to let things be, this is what, what Suzuki was talking about, to let things be as it is, and just watch it. And I think that at the heart of our practice is the endless attempt not to limit things by placing names on them, not to limit our feelings, our perceptions, uh, our, our friends or anything that, uh, and it's very hard for us to get beyond

[68:56]

language because the language has actually shaped our thinking in so many ways. So, I thank you for, I thank you for, uh, calling that to our attention. And I think we have to end. Thank you.

[69:14]

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