No, we're getting ready for a lecture by William Stirling. And what I would like to do before he begins, and I will speak more fully on this in the morning, is to say a few words about the focus for sitting this evening, which is, as always, colored by in this case for me, where I've been this past week, which is stimulating, once again, my interest in the nature of the mind. And in particular, what I hope we can spend a little time considering, is the capacity we have, or the obstacles holding simultaneously apparently conflicting ideas or states of mind, et cetera.

[01:16]

One expression of what I'm talking about is Thich Nhat Hanh's poem about please call me by my true names. And I think that we get ourselves into a great deal of trouble with respect to what we think it's okay to think or act from and what we like or dislike. Anyway, that's the territory that I hope we might illuminate a tiny bit more as we sit and walk and eat and all those things. Listen to Bill, who's now going to speak. Thank you. Well, my subject is the nature of mind and how we may approach studying it.

[02:17]

The self-reliance verse again. The Buddhas cannot wash our sins away with water, nor can they remove our suffering with their hands. They cannot transfer their insights to us. All they can do is teach the Dharma. I am, each of us is, her, his own protector. All they can do is teach the Dharma. Well, how can we participate in the process as students to maximize its effectiveness? Now a subtext is something of a prologue to a preface for an introduction to the monthly study seminars. We'll start in October.

[03:21]

I mean in what I'm going to say to start edging up on that a little bit, just kind of warm up. That's a raccoon. Fred barking at the raccoon. Thank you. That is a distinction. But the raccoon was one of the codependent conditions which prompted the barking. I have felt most of my life that study is enjoyable. It's a source of amusement and entertainment of the most positive sort, as well as an edifying pastime. And it's in that spirit that I'm coming to this, and once again I am grateful for your indulgence in letting me speak to you.

[04:28]

Yvonne's willingness without expressing too much anxiety to let me occasionally experiment out loud and explore. The mind, I think, can be likened to a city or a garden. Yvonne just said that the theme for tomorrow is about holding conflicting ideas in mind. Which pair of glasses shall I put on? I think we commonly hold many ideas in mind simultaneously. And I'm proposing, for the moment, city and garden. Now, people with more urban dispositions may favor the city metaphor, and those with more rural dispositions may favor the garden metaphor, but they are not exclusive at all. So I'm going to invite you to consider the mind first as a city, then as a garden.

[05:34]

And what cities and gardens have in common, and you will think of other features, but what struck me for my purpose this evening, is that each is capable of design, it's amenable to planning, one can work out a city plan, one can work out a garden plan, Each is susceptible of rearrangement. It's possible to alter the plan, alter the design. And each is responsive to care or to the absence of care. And I would posit that the same is true of our minds. Now, a city if we think of city as metaphor for mind, has a number of elements, and I noted down a few here.

[06:37]

You may find in the city of the mind parks of intuition, for example, tenements of despair, cul-de-sacs of low self-esteem, fountains of appreciation, bridges of compassion, flats of idleness, amp theaters of effort, plazas of mindfulness, promenades of afflictive emotion, theaters of bare noting, gardens of realization. And you can think of other suburbs and divisions and neighborhoods. Now to find one's way around, a map, of course, is useful. So part of the process of study is a process of mapping and becoming familiar with the various regions to which the map may lead and seeing how they relate to each other.

[07:48]

And in the process of rearranging what one finds, say a redevelopment project to pursue the city metaphor, a couple of things are helpful. A blueprint of what already exists, particularly plans of the infrastructure, the subterranean facilities. And also, a second thing are designs and plans for the new construction. Because in the process of redevelopment, one needs to know what has been in place and work out how the new fits in, in terms of what the old has been. Now similarly, moving to the garden, this is the rural shift. A garden can be tended for better or for worse. It can produce fruit which is bitter,

[08:51]

as well as fruit which is sweet. It can produce plants that are poisonous as well as plants that are nutritious. And just as the urban planner has tools and skills that are useful, so also does a gardener. It's useful to know how to distinguish between plants that are wholesome and plants that are noxious. It's useful to know that so one can nip in the bud the plants that one doesn't wish to cultivate. Recognizing what kind of plants one has greatly aids the matter of selective weeding. It's useful to know the various factors that affect the garden and what grows in it. The nature of the soil, weather patterns, distribution of light and shade, how much to water, the utility of composting.

[09:58]

There's a Latin phrase, if I can remember this, from Cato the Elder, who wrote about farming, and Cicero quotes him, Quid loquar de utilitatis stercorandi? How shall I express the usefulness, but the feeling is how shall I extol the marvels of composting? One needs to know, to be successful in gardening, the best time to prune, the best time to plant out. It helps to know the effects of juxtaposing one plant to another. Some plants will deter insects. Some, like the borage, strengthen the soil and encourage the other plants. So these are some ways to think about the mind metaphorically.

[11:03]

I find sometimes the pure psychology can get a little dry. But we can consider the mind directly, and in some of the readings we'll do, that's exactly what we will do. We'll study its infrastructure, we'll study its design, we'll study its amenability to redevelopment and relandscaping. Now this is of course what Shakyamuni Buddha did. He studied mind. He had insight into mind. And when his insight had fully penetrated the subject matter, he lit up. He illumined the universe. He became radiant. He was enlightened. Now I want to read a passage to you. that I just think is delicious.

[12:08]

This is from Buddhaghosa, who was an Indian scholar saint, living in the 5th century. And this is from a book entitled, I don't know how to say it, Atasalini, which is a commentary on the first book of the Abhidharma. Now to understand the depth of the Abhidharma, This is from the Pali, so it's dhamma, not dharma. It must be understood that there are four oceans. The ocean of repeated births, the ocean of waters, the ocean of method, and the ocean of knowledge. Which is the ocean of method? The three pitikas, the word of the Buddha. Pitika means basket. Now he says, in the course of his text, of these four oceans, that of method, the third ocean, is here intended, for omniscient Buddhas penetrate it.

[13:21]

And our blessed one, seated at the foot of the wisdom tree, penetrated it and thought, to this is my vision pierced. Lo, even to this Law, in a sense, the Pali word will have been Dharma for Law, so where I'm reading Law, understand Dharma with a capital D. Even to this Law have I reached, who, seeking and inquiring for more than a hundred thousand ages, for over four incalculable periods, here seated in this cross-legged posture as on a throne, have expelled every conceivable corruption, And he sat on the throne for yet seven days reflecting on the law, on the dharma he had penetrated. And he sits for a period of three periods of seven days. Now, not even on a single day during the interval of 21 days were rays emitted from the teacher's body.

[14:27]

During the fourth week he sat in a jewel house in the northwest direction. The jewel house here does not mean a house made of the seven jewels, but the place where he contemplated the seven books, the seven books of the Abhidharma. And while he contemplated the contents of the Dhammasangani, the first book, his body did not emit rays. And similarly with the contemplation of the next five books. But when, coming to the great book, this is the seventh book, the Bhatana, When coming to the Great Book, he began to contemplate the 24 universal causal relations of condition, presentation, and so on. His omniscience certainly found its opportunity then. For, as the great fish, Timirati Pingala, finds room only in the great ocean 84,000 yojanas in depth, so his omniscience truly finds room only in the Great Book.

[15:33]

Rays of six colors, indigo, golden, red, white, tawny, and dazzling, issued from the teacher's body as he was contemplating the subtle and abstruse dharma by his omniscience, which had found this opportunity. The indigo rays issued from his hair and the blue portions of his eyes. Owing to them, the surface of the sky appeared as though besprinkled with coryllium powder, or covered with flax and blue lotus flowers, or like a jeweled fan swaying to and fro, or a piece of dark cloth fully spread out. The golden rays issued from his skin and the golden portions of his eyes. Owing to them the different quarters of the globe shone as though besprinkled with some golden liquid, or overlaid with sheets of gold, or bestrown with saffron powder and bauhinia flowers.

[16:37]

The red rays issued from his flesh and blood in the red portions of his eyes. Owing to them, the quarters of the globe were colored as though painted with red lead powder, or besprinkled with the liquid of molten lac, or wrapped round with red blankets, or bestrewn with the shoe flower, the sea coral, and bandujivica flowers. The white rays issued from his bones, teeth, and the white portions of his eyes. Owing to them, the quarters of the globe were bright as though overflowing with streams of milk poured out of silver pots, or overspread with a canopy of silver plates, or like a silver fan swaying to and fro, or as though well covered with such flowers as the wild jasmine, water lily, chasteflower, jasmine, and coffeewort. The tawny and dazzling rays issued from the different parts of his body. Thus the six colored rays came forth and caught the great mass of earth.

[17:45]

The great earth having a thickness of 240,000 yajanas appeared like a burnished lamp of gold. The rays penetrated the earth and caught the water below. The water which supports the earth and has a depth of 480,000 yajanas appeared like gold dust poured out of golden jars. They penetrated the water and caught the atmosphere, which 960,000 euganas in thickness appeared like well-erected columns of gold. Penetrating the atmosphere, they sprang forth into the open space beyond. Going upwards, they caught the abodes of the four regions of the world. Penetrating these, they caught the Tavatimsa, and thence the Yama, thence the Tushita, thence the Nimanarati, thence the Parinimitta-vasavati spheres, and thence the nine Brahma worlds, thence the Vihapala, thence the five pure abodes, and thence the four Arupa heavens.

[18:49]

Having penetrated the last of these, they sprang into the open space, across to the infinite world systems. In so many of these places, there was no light in the moon, nor in the sun, nor in the host of stars. Nowhere was there luster, neither in the parks, nor in the mansions, nor in the wish-yielding tree, nor in the bodies and ornaments of the gods. Even great Brahma, able to diffuse light throughout a billion world systems, became like a glowworm at sunrise. There appeared only the mere outline of the moon, the sun, the host of stars, and the parks, mansions, and the wish-yielding tree of the gods. So much space was flooded by the Buddha's rays. Such power is not in the potency of resolve nor of culture. But the blood of the Lord of the world became clear as he contemplated such a subtle and abstruse dharma.

[19:55]

Likewise, the physical basis of his thought and his complexion. The element of color produced by the caloric order born of the mind steadily established itself with a radius of 80 cubits. In this way, he contemplated for a whole week. Now, that is an example of lighting up in the process of study. May we also so light up. Well, I find the language is just marvelous. You wonder what the guy may be on, but I actually think it's the kind of vision that is the consequence of the sort of study, and I want to emphasize what sort it is in a moment, that we have before us. I want to make one more aside.

[20:57]

Yes. The morning that, or anyway, the day that Bill read this passage, I've never seen you quite so blissed out by the glowworm, the contrast between the Buddha's... The Buddha's radiance and the glowworm at sunrise. Well, there are these quite lovely visionary passages that occur from time to time. And this is of interest to me because it's 5th century, relatively early in a certain sense. So, how do we go about studying the mind from a Buddhist perspective or in a Buddhist way? Let me quote here Edward Kanzi, who was a German-born scholar who wrote, I think, chiefly in English.

[22:08]

He was a refugee from Germany before World War II. He was actually English, but he happened to be born in Germany. Germany, is that it? Because his parents were there, and he was a diplomat and stuff like that. But he actually happened to be my great friend. He writes in the manner of a highly educated European. He feels more European than English in his outspokenness. Anyway, he asserts there are four possible sources of knowledge. Sense perception, reasoning, intuition, and revelation. Now from a Buddhist point of view, I'll say something else first. Sense perception is primary. Reasoning is secondary. That is, we reason based upon the information we collect through sensory experience.

[23:15]

The process of reasoning relies upon what we take in with our senses. By intuition, he means, one means, I think, the direct apprehension of something. Knowing it directly without going through the senses. It's not clear. To get a hold of something. as a mode of cognizing, of knowing something. It means you just get it without thinking about it. In particular, without thinking about it. There's no thinking in intuition. It's an altogether different mode.

[24:19]

But the emphasis is upon direct apprehension rather than inferential apprehension that involves two steps. First sense perception and then some interpretation of the sensory data to generate concepts in the mind to which we relate. Intuition is direct apprehension of things as they are. And that's the nature of the Buddha's understanding of things. It's intuitive. And it's the nature of the understanding which other realized beings enjoy, and which people enjoy in degree, because there are degrees of understanding. One may understand something to a greater or a lesser depth. One's intuitive faculty may be developed, more developed, further developed, and so on.

[25:21]

So the fourth category of information, revelation, or maybe better, revealed information, is the information which the Buddha transmits through his teachings. The Buddha apprehended by his intuition the way things actually are, the truth about the world, the truth of dependent arising, for example. He gropped that himself, personally, directly. He penetrated, as Buddha Gosa says, to the heart of the matter. And then he was persuaded to teach it. Because, as the Brahma who came down from the heavens and besought him said, there are beings yet who have only a little dust in their eyes.

[26:22]

Your effort in teaching would not be wasted, because there are some who can listen. There are some who can understand, who only have a little dust in their eyes. So the fourth category of information is also derivative, but from primary intuitive understanding. Now let me read a little jab from Kanze. Bitter and incredible as it must seem to the contemporary mind, Buddhism bases itself, first of all, on the revelation of the truth by an omniscient being known as the Buddha, and secondly, on the spiritual intuition of saintly beings. Now, let me gloss there.

[27:28]

basic insight was itself intuitive. And then he taught, and what he taught is the revelation, or the information revealed to us in consequence of his insight. And that's what he means by that. Then he says, and secondly, on the spiritual intuition of saintly beings. Well, that's just repeating the process again that the Buddha went through. In all disputes, the ultimate appeal is, however, not to the experience of Tom, Dick, and Harry, to our common sense understanding of how things are based on sensory experience and what we infer from that. Appeal is not to that, but to the experience of the fully enlightened Buddha as laid down in the Buddha Word. that is, in the teachings, that are collected in the three baskets, the Tripitaka, or in Pali, the Tipitaka, without the R. The three baskets are the collection of moral rules, the Vinaya, the Sutras, which are the

[28:52]

records of the actual teachings of the Buddha or his principal disciples speaking for him, and the Abhidharma, which is a collection of seven books which deal with epistemology, which is how we know, what the process of knowing is, the mechanics of knowing. and with psychology, to use the modern word, which concerns the nature of mind and the operation of mind. The words of the Buddha, the teachings of the Buddha, the information he has provided based upon his own intuitive insight is recorded in the writings that make up the Three Baskets.

[29:57]

And in studying those writings, mere intellectual study alone would miss the point. These are writings to be meditated upon because the faculty, the capacity we want to develop is our own intuitive faculty so that we can begin directly to apprehend things as they are. So this Buddhist way of studying things or the approach to knowledge and understanding which Shakyamuni Buddha followed is not the Western empirical scientific method which focuses upon the analysis of external phenomena

[31:00]

trial and error experimentation, a hypothesis to be tested, worked out, statistical probabilities. It's an examination of the phenomena we discern and can observe and apprehend by looking in. The definition of meditation continues to be meditation is mind training. And there are many ways to go about mind training. We can do it, as we were saying before dinner, lying, sitting, standing, walking, running, bowing. We can also do it by studying texts and meditating upon them and letting the information in the texts work in us. I want to say something about faith, because I think it's a loaded word in our culture.

[32:03]

It may pull to it a lot of associations or baggage from other religious traditions. But as I understand the way it's used in the Buddhist language, Faith refers to a willingness to accept provisionally the teachings that are expressed in the three baskets. A willingness to try the information on as though it's accurate and valid. for as long as it takes for us to determine in our own personal experience whether the proposition we've accepted provisionally on faith is valid or no.

[33:03]

Because the ultimate touchstone is our own experience. It is finally through my own experience of something that I can say, yes, this is so, or no, this isn't so. And the locus for saying that is in the quiet, still, meditating mind. So all the training I've had in my own education, particularly as a male in this culture, has I've gone to refining my capacity to think, to be analytical. Very useful for a lawyer, but useful for many, many walks of life. And now what I'm setting about is learning to develop my intuition.

[34:05]

beginning to exercise that muscle which if not altogether atrophied feels seriously underdeveloped and the gymnasium for exercising my intuitive faculty is the cushion sitting in meditation. So in the monthly seminars we are going to commence in October. We'll be taking initially some sutras as our texts to study, but I hope each of us will not only read them, read them critically and analytically, but also meditate on them. That will involve the right hemisphere in responding to the sutras.

[35:11]

But we'll engage them with our hearts as well as with our brains. We'll engage them with our minds. You'll understand with me that the mind is here in the heart chakra. I don't mean the organ up here in the cranium. It's from the mind, it's by the mind that we apprehend directly. how things are. Intuition comes from here. So that's about studying the Buddha word, a process that I do sincerely hope will cause each of us to light up, have bulbs go off more brightly than glowworms at sunrise. So, are there any comments or questions before bedtime? I'll put my glasses on so I can see you.

[36:12]

The other glasses. Well, I understand it as... Let me come right this way. We've talked about emptiness, about the absence of inherent existence in something tangible like this table. That makes no sense at all. It's completely contrary to common sense. Floor's there, table's there, it's solid. But I assert it has no independent self-existence. It exists only in so far as there are a series of conditions coinciding that permit atoms, I don't know, to come together and in the coming together in our presence constitute itself as a discernible intelligible object.

[37:27]

Would it be here if we weren't here to see it? Crazy stuff. But I ask you to take that on faith, in that sense, kind of scientific faith. Take on that notion as though it's true for the duration of your own examination, investigation, experimentation to find out if the proposition the table has no inherent existence is valid. It's faith in that sense. Well, I think of it more as kind of a very short step because it's skeptical. It's open-minded skepticism. There's an element of Coleridge's willing suspension of disbelief. Okay, I'll try it on, but I'm not going to leave the room altogether.

[38:31]

Part of my mind will remain aware that I'm still testing this. I mean, this teaching about emptiness came from the Buddha. And I've heard it from some teachers whom I deeply revere, Taratulku and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but not completely. Particularly when they repeatedly insist that I get to this understanding myself. The Buddhas cannot transfer their insights to us. All they can do is teach the Dharma. It's up to each of us to understand it, to learn it. This marvelous law, the Dharma. And the way we learn it, thoroughly and successfully, is the way the Buddha did, which is directly with our hearts, intuitively.

[39:46]

Not through thinking about it. So our classroom is not in... This is the school. Such a relief. Yes? To be able to not have to think about it. Well, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. We need to engage all our faculties. And there's a progression in which we need to keep thinking. We still live in the world of everyday things. Tables have solidity to them. They can bruise a shinbone, and we all experience that, and the experience seems pretty real. And then one can ask, who experiences

[40:48]

So I think, is this responsive to what you're asking about faith? It's a very energetic, curious, alert kind of attitude. And it arises from the sense, I am my own protector. Be on guard not to con myself, not to accept on somebody else's say-so a statement about who I am or what I'm feeling. I need to check in with myself to see what's so. It seems to me that one of the problems with the word faith is that, at least I know in my own upbringing and training, it smacks too much of blind faith of be quiet and believe this because I said so.

[41:56]

So there's a lot of that kind of baggage that I think goes with the word. And to keep in mind that there's this continual encouragement to, in fact necessity, to check things out, to discover things, to examine things out of one's own direct experience and to include I have trouble with the word faith, and it's totally got to do with whatever history the word has. Well, I think blind faith points exactly to what is not meant here. Faith is one of the virtuous mental factors. Remember, there's primary mind and there are 51 mental factors. and some are always present and some come and go.

[43:00]

Faith is said to be one of the virtuous mental factors and one of its virtues is that it is itself the basis, the precondition for positive aspiration. operates within us to help move forward the process of studying and beginning to apprehend directly what the truth is. Does the word willingness help out around that? How would it help out? How would you see it as helping out? Does it help you out? Well, if I take the attitude of experimentation, when you talk about trying something on, seeing if it works for you, that requires a willingness on my part.

[44:02]

So there has to be some trust in me, and some curiosity. Yeah, I think that there's some willingness in there, but it's... It's contained, it's protected by a resolution not to give oneself away. It's experimental, it's provisional. Let's try it on and see if it makes sense. Let's walk around it and look at it from every angle. Let's kick the tires over some period of time. before accepting a proposition which has vital importance to us. It affects the way we live our lives. So one of the things that we could encourage ourselves to do is to say, I don't know, I don't understand what this means, or this doesn't fit with what my experience is, and to really help each other out in whatever we decide to read individually

[45:11]

I think that would be, it's the presence of some atmosphere of supporting each other to be able to, oh, when we read something, what does this mean? I think one of the places where I would wager each of us has had this experience, and to me it's an instance of intuition operating. It's when I go, somebody's talking, there's a lecture, there's a teacher, and I go to ask a question because something doesn't make sense and then I stuff it. But that impulse to ask the question I think is the intuition kicking in. The double take, what? Let's honor that. Let's practice asking the question at that point, raising the hand, say, whoops, stop, what was that?

[46:15]

And encourage our intuition. You know, let's bumble around with it. We can have preschool intuition exercises or whatever, but that's the faculty to develop. according to these teachings, according to Kamsa, and it makes complete sense to me. Could you just give the derivation again of apprehension? The hen part is to hold on to, to grasp, and the pre is to do it in front, so I go to hold something in front of me, And the app part of it signifies really reaching. So I'm reaching directly to something in front of me. The force of it is no intermediary steps.

[47:23]

It's not through something else. It has that force, but I think we maybe have to have an agreement amongst us that that's what it means when we use the word. I actually think saying direct apprehension kind of reinforces the idea. So it's knowing not but with concepts. Because concepts arise in the mind and serve as filters or lenses through which we perceive? I just thought of something, you know, I can't remember, I said this to somebody earlier today. Suzuki Roshi, one time, I don't know if you've probably said this more than once, but I heard him say one time that the difference between Buddhist practice, that he was speaking specifically about

[48:33]

And in terms of what you were just talking about, the difference when we bring ourselves, as we do in meditating on something, is more bringing ourselves to this direct apprehending. So the direct apprehending of suffering and the causes and conditions of suffering, particularly as we know it ourselves, is a little unusual. And it's difficult to speak about. I think we most often use metaphors of sight to describe seeing something, or we may say getting something. But we reference sensory experience all the time in terms of how our understanding comes to us. The root of intuition is inturi, which means to look upon or look at something, so it's look again.

[49:57]

But the idea is apprehending or perceiving in a way that bypasses the senses. and goes straight to that which is to be understood. What you're describing sounds to me like something that you're actually... There's an interaction, active and aggressive. Not aggressive so much as assertive. Well, there's engagement. I mean, insofar as even when we're talking about apprehension, there's the apprehender and that apprehended.

[51:11]

This is still subject-object and dual. who we're talking about now, a mode of knowing. I think there is active engagement, but it's so electric that the universe lights up. When the Buddha got to this point, he got to the great book about the Dharma, He hadn't emitted rays up to that point, but when he penetrated, when he apprehended to the heart of the Dharma, he went electric. He went atomic. And his glow penetrated the billions of universes. I mean, that's what this metaphor is about, I think. And that radiance is a consequence of the fullness and the depth of his apprehension. So when we start to sparkle, we'll know we're on the right track.

[52:18]

The sparkle effect. That's going to be my next question. How do we know we're on the right track? Taking something like that seems My sense is that, I think there's another question, I want to answer your question with my thought, which is, we actually know more than we let on to ourselves. I think, at least my experience is, I often don't recognize those moments and when they come I don't trust them. which is why I'm talking about exercising my personal intuition muscle. As I say, I feel this very strongly, that as a male in this culture, I was taught away from that.

[53:21]

I was discouraged from solving math problems by getting the answer. I had to be able to show on paper what the solution was. And so I was trained, I was whipped into being good at thinking. So I'm pretty wary from the time I was, you know, a grade schooler of this other way of knowing things. Yeah, but I think there's more room for women in our culture to cultivate that kind of relational thinking. I can hardly talk about it. That relational cognizing that responds to the vibe in a place or in a person.

[54:34]

And I don't think of that as going through the head. It's far more a heart awareness. And I see women particularly relying on that kind of understanding and trusting it, having some confidence in it. And I observe that it works, you know, it's accurate. So this is another way of talking about the way intuition manifests itself. So for me, anyway, at least, it's not having it. I have it. It's undeveloped. But I'm very timid and shy around it because I haven't built it up so much. But I think that's because women are ruled by blood and males are ruled by chi. So it's easier for women to... That's why women who are very, very left-brained have their own set of things that you are expressing that you don't have.

[55:44]

But some of it is just in the energetics, the different energetics. So it isn't entirely cultural? It isn't entirely cultural, I don't think. Can that energetics be changed? Well, I think it can be cultured. You know, it's interesting that in so many Asian cultures, the word for mind is the same as the word for heart. And that we think the mind is located up in the head of the brain. It's always something, a tap on the table. Thank you. Yes, Deborah. A few minutes ago when we were talking about faith, the willingness to experiment and try something on, it reminds me of 12-step work of take what you leave and like the rest.

[56:52]

And I think that requires a certain amount of self-faith and self-trust. That connects for me with what you were just saying, which I really agree with you about not having that muscle developed, particularly in males. But I also think that culturally, even though women, I think culturally women are given a dull message to not trust themselves and to not have self-faith, but yet we're the carriers of the emotional and the intuition. We have to do that work within the family and within the society. Yes. We're asked to be in that domain, yet that domain isn't valued as much as the left brain analytical. I think that's so. And what we need to do, so what I think we can do, each of us personally can do his or her best to develop and integrate all the faculties.

[58:01]

We can't change society, we can't change each other, but we can individually work on ourselves. We can engage in mind training, and not just part of the mind, but the whole event. our feelings, our sensory capabilities, our intuition, our thinking faculty. And that's the Jungian quadripartite division. And who knows, then, what the ripple effect will be. not very hidden intentions in the Buddhist tradition is the notion that the presence of one deeply cultivated person in a situation can in fact have a profound effect for change. When we are after all sitting here in Shakyamuni Buddha's ripple effect,

[59:09]

Well, there's a certain tendency to recumbency, which suggests to me that unless someone has something burning or even flickering. Is that the opposite of sparkling? Well, it's kind of getting down. It's at the embers end of it. Yeah, right. Okay, well let me say the self-reliance verse again to close on. The Buddhas cannot wash our sins away with water, nor remove our sufferings with their hands. They cannot transfer their insights to us. All they can do is teach the Dharma. I am my own protector. Sleep well, well-protected, dream of intuition.

[60:18]

You're welcome. An excursion on aqueducts. You can, you know, do your own city planning. Amphitheaters of effort.

[60:39]

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