Good morning. Can you hear me okay? Yes, sound is fine. Good. Your image is slightly fuzzy. I wonder if you could scoot in a bit. I think what I need to do is the following. One second. Close your eyes. Hmm. That's not a lot better, is it? Let me see what camera we're using here. Huh. That appears better to me. OK. Yeah, it's sharper now. OK. I think it was using my computer rather than my webcam.

[01:06]

Well, thank you for bearing with all the technicalities here. This is, we're learning as we're still learning. So thank you to everybody who's making this go. Let's just take a few breaths. So this morning, we have begun our revised Rohatsu Sefin. The Sefin we're doing, the Rohatsu we're doing in this strange year of 2020. Rohatsu actually translates to mean the eighth day of the 12th month.

[02:11]

and you may notice that this is December 19th so we've missed by 11 days. Usually the 8th day of the 12th month in the revised Japanese calendar is when we observe when the northern Buddhist tradition observes Buddha's enlightenment and so this is Usually, it would be a seven-day sashi and it would begin traditionally on the first and culminate on the eighth. Last week, I'll say I spoke to our son, Alex, who's in Japan, and they did a very traditional rohatsu. Very traditional rohatsu. They didn't lie down for seven days. They weren't allowed to take their futons out.

[03:17]

They had to kind of lean against the wall. And then the last night, you stay up all night. And it's a young person's game, I think, at least as far as I'm concerned. But it's wonderful. And he was glowing from it. So we've moved it this year. And sometimes this is the appropriate response. to not be stuck on a particular calendar date or form but to to fit it to the activity of people's actual lives and our lives are in a very different rhythm these days. So we do celebrate Buddha's enlightenment and it's important to remember that we are celebrating is every time we sit down, every time we sit in zazen, we take up the posture and the mind that Buddha demonstrated to us 2,500 years ago.

[04:32]

So we're not missing anything and we have the opportunity for the next three days to to practice together and really dig in. And I'm quite enjoying it so far. And it's great. It's really great to be here with all of you. But what I'd like to do for these days is to pick up on teachings that Sojin Roshi began two weeks ago at his Thursday evening gathering. He spoke about birth and death and I know that he intended to continue on this subject and if he is able to he will.

[05:36]

And I know that you are aware, we're all aware that this is, uh, this is a moment by moment question that Sojan is meeting. It's not a theoretical issue. And that's whether we know it or not, that's true for all of us. There's a koan in the Blue Cliff Records that I hold very closely. And I'm sure that you know it. A monk asked Master Yunmin, what is the teaching of a whole lifetime? And Yunmin said, an appropriate response. I've spoken of this before. This is case 14 in the Blue Cliff Record.

[06:43]

And it's also interesting to look at case 15, which is kind of, they go sort of hand in glove, but we're not going to get into that today. The translation that Sojin is partial to, which was also the translation that Suzuki Roshi used, was an early translation of the Blue Cliff Record by RDM Shaw and his translation of an appropriate response is the teaching confronts each. I think that's the teaching confronts each moment and the teaching confronts each being. It's more I hold that and turn it over in mind the more uh wonderful and useful it is.

[07:45]

So this is the teaching of birth and death as it is confronting Sojourner Roshi right now and really as it's confronting each of us in its own various frameworks of time and we'll talk about that. We have the time of a single moment, a thought, an activity, each of which has its birth, its period of life and its death. and we have the framework of time that covers a whole lifetime. Birth as we emerge from the womb, death as the breath and heartbeat depart from us, and what happens in between

[09:01]

which from some perspectives seems like a long time from other perspectives it's the blink of an eye. So we can also see the rhythm of birth and death in the year itself. It seems like uh The death of 2020 is near. Thank God. A year that continues to challenge us in every way. And the birth of 2021 approaches with whatever it brings. It's joys and sorrows. So I want to read you just two sections from this fascicle, Shoji, and then turn to the commentary that Soju gave.

[10:18]

Shoji means birth and death. It's a very short fascicle. It only covers two pages. You can find this, you can find a good translation of it in Kaz Tanahashi's book, Moon and a Dew Drop. So I'll read you section three. It's a mistake to suppose that birth turns into death. Birth is a phase that is an entire period of itself with its own past and future. for this reason in buddhadharma birth is understand understood as no birth death is a phrase is a phase that is an entire period of itself with its own past and future for this reason death is understood as no deaths in birth there is nothing but birth and in death there is nothing but death

[11:34]

Accordingly, when birth comes, face and actualize birth. And when death comes, face and actualize death. Do not avoid or desire them. Then I want to read you in the last section, section five. I really love this section. There's a simple way to become a Buddha. When you refrain from unwholesome actions and are not attached to birth and death and are compassionate towards all sentient beings, respectful to seniors, kind to juniors, not excluding or desiring anything, with no designing thoughts or worries, you will be called a Buddha.

[12:43]

Do not seek anything else. In another fascicle of Dogon's, he gives the instruction, just throw yourself into the house of Buddha. And that's the same thing, I think. So for these talks that I'm giving, I'm turning to a number of talks that Sojin Roshi gave in North Carolina in Chapel Hill at his disciple, Joshua Pat Phelan Center. For a long time, Sojin visited there annually.

[13:46]

And the ties with that sangha are very close. And they transcribed and edited some wonderful lectures of his. The ones I'm working from were given in 1997 and 2008. And they do offer commentary on Shoji, Birth and Death, and Zinke, Total Dynamic Working. The text that Sojin is working from, which is not so readily accessible, was translated by Dr. Abe Masao and Norman Waddell. And it was some of the first Dogon that we had available in English, really good translations, really scholarly and clear. But as I said, the translations in Mutundu-Drup are very good and you can easily find them.

[14:49]

So I'm going to begin with one of the 2008 lectures and offer some comments perhaps as we go along. and leave ample time for discussion. And we'll just see how far it makes sense to go today. Usually when we think, this is from Sojan, usually when we think of life and death, we think of life as the manifestation of our activity and our consciousness and death as the cessation of activity in our consciousness. But Dogon equated the two. It's like two sides of a coin.

[15:53]

Birth is one side and death is the other. I don't like to use life and death as opposites. Because if we use life and death this way, it's like life is something static, and death is something static. But usually, birth and death are dynamic activities. There's nothing static about them. Life is the coin itself. I like that though. birth and death are the two sides of the coin and life is the substance of the coin itself. He says of course birth and death are ideas like the alternation of light and dark. Suzuki Roshi talked about this. We think something is really dark and something is really light.

[16:57]

but everything takes its color or its light and darkness in a comparative way. What we think of as light is only light compared to something that is dark. When we think of something that is dark, it is dark when compared to something that is light. These are ideas that we have that depend on our comparative way of looking at things. So I use the term life to mean the totality of birth and death and I use this in a non-dualistic way. What I would what I think is that so he's commenting in this fascicle zinky total dynamic working uh you could say that life is total dynamic working in that it includes birth, it includes death, it includes every dharma moment, every dharma position and every one of those moments is a complete is the complete unfolding of the complete manifestation of life and that's what we're doing

[18:27]

moment by moment of zazen even if it's sleepy zazen or impatient zazen or uh you know cruising zazen or joyful zazen all of that is moment by moment our whole life and there's a next moment that each of those moments has its birth and its death Sojin says, this, of course, is how most Buddhists think about our experience of continuation. In Buddhism, we have terms like reincarnation and rebirth, and there are various theories about birth and death and reincarnation, depending on what country a particular Buddhist tradition is from. I think that Tibetan Buddhism has a tendency to believe in reincarnation.

[19:34]

Theravada Buddhism thinks more in terms of rebirths. Zen teachers like to think that birth and death are happening on each moment and that life is continuous. To seek some kind of clarity is important because there are many ways to think about it. Dogen's understanding is that in birth there is death and in death there is birth each containing the other. I think that the reality of them containing each other is that's the fact or that's the unfolding of life. In the first sentence of Zenki, Dogen wrote, in the culmination of its quest, the great way of Buddhas is emancipation and realization.

[20:48]

Simply put, the purpose of Buddhist practice is finding emancipation and realization. For Dogen, Emancipation means that life emancipates life and that death emancipates death. And he explains in this case he means that it's possible to find our freedom or our emancipation within life. It's also to find emancipation within death. To find emancipation within life is to live fully on each moment at one with our activity. And it is possible in the same way to find our freedom within death. Suzuki Roshi liked to say that birth and death are the same thing.

[21:57]

I would say maybe that's beyond me. I might not be ready for that teaching yet. I hope I will. I hope I will arrive at it. So it's an interesting section. The next section says there are two ways of thinking about emancipation or freedom. They're synonymous. Emancipation, like the Emancipation Proclamation. So, you know, to to proclaim the fact of freedom. So these two ways of thinking about it, freedom within and freedom from. This is actually, it's actually resonant with the way that

[23:04]

freedom is discussed in various other modes of of western philosophy. So freedom within and and Sogen kind of unpacks this a bit freedom within is freedom to the freedom to do something the freedom to act in a certain way the freedom to freedom to express yourself uh freedom to uh define a meaningful life and the second aspect uh is freedom from so you have freedom to which is positive and freedom from which is i mean i hate to use the word negative but it's it's like the removing of hindrances Sojin says, we usually think that freedom means to do whatever we want.

[24:16]

I have the freedom to pursue happiness, but happiness is not a thing you can pursue. It's a byproduct, the result of our actions. Suzuki Roshi mostly talked of freedom from. and Buddhism mostly talks of freedom from so when we talk about uh some Buddhist some uh Indian traditions talk about the self and Buddhism talks about anatta no self that the uh Syllable, ah, is the negation. It's so most of what is talked about, and you'll see this again and again, in in early Buddhism, that what's talked about as liberative is the freedom from the things that really hinder us and block us and impede our, our lives.

[25:37]

And when those are relinquished or when they drop away, when we are free from them, then we are free to act. So Sojin says, Suzuki Roshi mostly talked about freedom from. For him, true freedom only comes about within limitations. We can easily become a victim of our diluted understanding of the meaning of freedom without limitations. I remember before I started the practice, I had a close friend, he's kind of a wild guy, who had a small amount of Zen training when he was overseas in Korea with the Peace Corps.

[26:45]

And we would get into arguments, my side was completely uninformed. And he would say, you know, well, everything's Zen. You know, whatever I do is Zen. And so I can do anything I want. And he wasn't talking about immorality, you just was saying, you know, everything is everything. And that bothers me. You know, I said, that can't be right. It can't be right. And I think when Okay, when I began to, when I took up practice, I really began to understand this principle of finding freedom within limitation.

[27:52]

So we find freedom within, certainly within the form of the posture of Zazen, the form of Zazen is a limitation. And there may be a part of us that wants to rebel against this limitation. And I guess from watching Sojin and from watching my elders, and I really noticed that really immediately when I came here, that it wasn't that people were controlled or repressed, it's that they were measured in their activity. And that Zazen itself was a measured activity, that the life of Zazen, Taigen Leighton speaks of the posture of Zazen as

[29:07]

Buddha mudra so we put our body into this particular posture and it's it's pretty limited and in fact sometimes it's really hard but we put ourselves into the posture that we see Buddha having taken up And we make that our life. And when we are in that posture, having learned to take up that posture, we are reborn. That's our birth. That is, we have, at least in that moment, thrown ourselves into the house of Buddha. And we're doing what? uh we're doing what uh what he says at the end of shoji uh if we're in zazen we're refraining from unwholesome actions we're not thinking about birth and death whichever comes we accept it and what i noticed in the

[30:34]

the elders around me and I am still personally working on is to be compassionate towards all sentient beings, to be respectful to seniors and kind to juniors, not excluding or desiring anything. I think that is that last phrase really seems to me to pinpoint the teachings of Suzuki Roshi and the teachings of Sojin Roshi. Not excluding

[31:35]

or desiring anything. It's not that you don't have desires it's just your life is not made of them. One time I think in lecture or someone asked Sojan Roshi what's the most important thing for a teacher to know? And he said, never want anything for yourself from your student. And from close observation, I know that he lives that, that he lives that. He may want our awakening, he may want us to practice, but it's never for his benefit or aggrandizement because he's already thrown himself completely into the house of Buddha.

[33:03]

And the question for each of us is, as we have, as we, as all of us have traditionally followed Shakyamuni Buddha, can we follow the example of Sojan Roshi in this, in this round of birth, life and death? So I think I'm going to stop here and we can continue. There's a lot more really good stuff in this talk and in the other talks and we'll, we'll, I sure don't want to pick out the jewels, but, uh, it's good not to just be, uh, overly sated, but, but the food of Dharma. So we have time for questions and answers or thoughts.

[34:11]

And Kika, are you going to call on people? Yes. I believe everyone is aware of how to raise your blue hand. There are quite a few people in here, so raising your physical hand is not going to be as effective. So go to the participants window, raise your blue hand if you have a question. And I'll field those. And if you want to type your question, type it to the host or the co-host, and Heiko will read those questions. You're going to call on them, right? I will. There's a there's a thinking period going on, I believe. OK, that's fine.

[35:13]

I'm not in a rush. There's no bus I have to catch. There may be a problem.

[36:15]

Heiko, do you see hands raised? I do. I don't see hands raised, so Heiko, could you take this, please? Certainly. We have first a question from Ben. Would you unmute yourself, Ben? Sure. Thank you, Heiko. Thank you, Hozon. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, I can hear you fine. Okay, great. What stood out to me from the Dogen, one of the Dogen sections you read is about birth being a period in and of itself with its own past and present, I'm paraphrasing, and death also. It made me think of a line that stuck with me from one of Sojin Roshi's talks from, it was this year, a couple of years ago, where he talked about when you feel sorrow, feel the sorrow completely and it will no longer be sorrow because there's nothing outside of it.

[37:21]

There's no opposite. And I wonder if maybe you can speak to, it seems like there was that same flavor in that passage from Dogen where it's because if you fully actualize birth so that there's nothing outside of birth, then you could maybe say there is no birth. And if you fully actualize death, so there's nothing outside of death, then you can say there is no death. What's your, I think I'm stumbling over myself, but thank you. No, I understand what you're, I understand the question. I think the analogy that I would, that I would, uh, that comes to mind is so say you've had a potentially serious medical diagnosis and you're going to have some tests or some treatment or whatever.

[38:29]

My experience is that the anticipation of those tests or treatment is excruciating. And partly that's because I'm conceptualizing them. It's I am standing outside of that activity and I am worrying about it. Hang on a second. whereas the actual experience of the treatment or the test or even the diagnosis is something else. Does that make any sense? To me, that's an example of standing outside of it and looking at it as in a dualistic way or fully entering.

[39:39]

It's like when you're entering it, when you're in it, you're in it. When you're in sorrow, you're in sorrow and there's nothing else. When you're in the process of dying, the idea of dying is alarming and frightening to most of us. The fact of it may not be so. And, you know, hesitate to talk about this but I had a medical emergency uh wow 30 years ago now and I was on the cusp of living and dying in that moment in in the midst of this procedure and uh that's what I was told afterwards by the by the doctors and nurses. Unfortunately, I came through fine.

[40:43]

But in the midst of that, I had some awareness that this was what was happening. And in the midst of that, I have some memory, whether it's true, whether it's active memory or not, of asking myself, well, how is this? Well, this is okay. uh if this is what happens okay but i prefer not and that all was fine afterwards it scared the shit out of me you know uh because i was outside of it looking at but inside of it it's something else so it's really this is important point not just for dire circumstances but for every every moment, every challenging moment of our lives. Thank you, Ben.

[41:47]

We have a question now from Daniel O'Hara. Daniel, please unmute yourself and ask your question. You talked about different types of death, I think, or something like that, different understandings of what, when, or what not of birth and death. And is there any birth and death that isn't Like, is there an understanding or a knowledge or something of any kind of birth and death other than the immediate experience of time right now?

[42:51]

I'm not quite sure I understand the question. Like what I said, well, what I said was you can think of it in multiple frames of time. You can think of it as moment by moment. And what, what surgeon talked about was yes. And you have these different theories of, uh, of rebirth and reincarnation. Uh, and you can think of it in the context of a lifetime or multiple lifetimes depends on what you, how you think of it. But in terms of verifiable by immediate experience, like it seems like

[43:59]

lifetime I guess the frame the perspective of lifetime seems more theoretical to me but well it seems theoretical to me as well but you know it's not theoretical to people who believe otherwise you know when Sojin Roshi was asked about you know, kind of multiple lifetimes, you know, his response was, I don't remember. I like that a lot. It's like, well, maybe, but right, but I can't remember them right now. You know, maybe if he was a Buddha, he would remember them. So I, I can't say, all I can do is take care of the lifetime that's unfolding right now. That's what's critically important to me and I have some faith that if one takes care of one's immediate life and what's right in front of them, then other things will take care of themselves.

[45:11]

It's not to say that bad things don't happen to good people, but I can just take care of this moment and this life that I have. So, thank you. We have a question from Jeanette. Jeanette, would you unmute yourself, please? Ask your question. Yes, Jeanette. It's Jeanette, right? Right, as in John Jeanette. Thank you. Yes, it's Jeanette. Yes, thank you. I was on something. And thank you for continuing with, this is like it's the oracle, go on. I'm stuck on your saying that Suzuki Roshi used to say life and death are the same thing.

[46:14]

And my mind is just worrying, trying to deconstruct that and figure it out. And I'm wondering how you understand that. I don't know. I'd have to see more. I'd have to, I, you know, I like to understand the context of, uh, of a teaching or what people write, because my understanding of, uh, my understanding of all Buddhist teachings is that they are medicine. They are medicine to bring us into balance. They're not food. You don't necessarily make a meal of it, just as you would make a meal of your medicine. So without knowing the context, what Suzuki Roshi was speaking to, I am hesitant to speculate about that. That might be a good question.

[47:18]

When we get to, you know, if, when we get to speak to Sojan again, that's really a good question for him. Because maybe he was there. Right, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. We have now a question from Jake. Jake, can you unmute yourself and ask your question? Okay, actually, I'm going to go first. Oh, Leslie. Hi. I wonder if you could say more about what Dogen said about just throw yourself into the house of Buddha, especially the just and the throw. Well, I'm not sure. Yeah. Traditionally, I mean, well, There's a way of looking at Japanese Buddhism that formulates it as there's two aspects of it, theoretically.

[48:28]

And I know that Sojin didn't buy this, and neither do I. Zen is a self-power. There's self-power and other power. Zen is theoretically a self-power school. So in other words, in order to wake up, in order to live an emancipated life, you have to throw yourself, you know, you have to throw yourself, you know, so you have to do something yourself. And, you know, one way I look at that is, we had to sign up for Seshim and show up for the periods and keep the schedule. Back in the days when we used to come to the Zendo, we had to get ourselves to the Zendo. You guys had to schlep in from Pleasant Hill.

[49:33]

You could call that self-power. The other The other school, the other side of Japanese Buddhism, is this other power. And so the Zen school is a self-power school and the shin or Jodo shin, which is right down the block actually, is nominally an other power school, means everything that we have is given to us by the Buddhists. I will say that a lot of that I have met a lot of really completely seeming awake people in the Jodo Shinshu school and I admire them a lot because they have faith and because what they don't even call what they do practice because they don't want to take responsibility for a self

[50:41]

that that is empowered but it just they receive the gifts and they pass them on and it's like so I can say yes I had to get myself here in the early 80s and you know find literally find the gate and the address and walk in and then do that repeatedly. How did I get there? That was not self. That is a great mystery. How did Sojin end up, he was looking, how did he end up at Suzuki Roshi's door? This is beyond the activity of the self. It's, this is the mystery of total dynamic working. So, you know, again, this in this context of medicine, I think Dogen was, was giving some encouragement to his monastic students, telling them, what should your spirit of practice be?

[51:47]

But how they got to the monastery is the enactment of total dynamic working. So that's the way I think of that. Is that helpful? Yes, very much so. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Now I have a question. A couple more, maybe. Jake, go ahead. OK. Briefly, Hosen, I asked this question of Sogen when he was talking about birth and death and life. I asked the question of breath. When I have been with someone dying, trying to find her breath, I've been scarred, as we all have, by seeing George Floyd calling that he could not breathe. What is one's refuge when one cannot find one's last breath? Is it just to let go of that? Yeah.

[52:50]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's nothing else to do. Yeah. And that moment will come for all of us. Yeah. Uh, and sometimes It's really easy and sometimes it's really hard. And that seems to depend on things that are beyond our understanding. You know, uh, and, uh, all I can think of doing is just to take care of my breath now. And you know, we have to look at the world, uh, to do what we can so that everyone can breathe freely and easily.

[53:54]

You know, that means, you know, actually taking care of the air, taking care of the environment, uh, and taking care of our bodies and helping people take care of their own bodies. So we take care of ourselves, but also we have this broader responsibility, I think. Thank you. We'll take one more question from Yoni, and then we'll do maybe a written question. Yoni, please unmute yourself. Hello, Hozon. Hi, Yoni. So my brother's in medical school right now. Every once in a while, I'll get a suggestion for a book or article. And something I was reading recently was on the immune system and how every day in our bodies, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of cells are born and then die.

[54:58]

And all of those cells support our lives. And I found that very inspiring in connection to what you were just saying. And I wonder if it makes sense to think of practice as choosing the bodies for which, the body that we wish to be a cell in. If that makes sense. If I'm a cell, what body am I sustaining? The whole earth is your true body. Every cell, every part of our body is cooperating. It's cooperating in its life, it's cooperating in its

[56:03]

death when it it's it falls away to make room for other cells this is true of the whole earth that's that's the true body that we're part of and so we have to take care of our so-called individual body and our family body, our Sangha body, in the way that we take care of the whole world. I do see Linda's hand before we take the written question. Linda, go ahead. Oh, I already gave up, so I I let my wish to ask a question experience death. Anyway.

[57:06]

Has it been reborn now? Yeah, matter of fact. What a surprise. Well, when you talk about birth and death as two sides of the coin and so on, I on some level believe and sort of understand that. You reached back to an experience 30 years ago to talk about really experiencing that. So my question is both, how are you really experiencing that right now? And can you help me really experience it right now? Because understanding and believing it on some level is not helping me experience it. When Yoni just asked this question, immediately the answer came to mind.

[58:16]

And the impact of that brings me to tears. I don't know what more to say. Did you die and were born in that moment? Yes. Okay. Um, there are two questions in the chat. I don't know if you want to go for both of them. It's last two. Yes. Okay. Um, this one is from, uh, Chris Evans and he simply writes limitation means self-discipline. Yeah. Or it just means discipline. Forget about the self. You are not limiting yourself. It's just sitting down within whatever constraints there are.

[59:29]

Who is it? You still have the question, who is limiting? So I think that's as far as I want to go with that. That's an interesting question. I was just, I was just, well, with the pandemic, I have been questioning what self-discipline is. And I had written down exactly what Chris wrote, but I wrote the spirit of repetition is discipline after reading the Suzuki Roshi chapter on repetition. I think that's true. Yeah. I just found that a nice connection there. But the spirit, you know, just to say, to use a musical analogy, the way of a musician or an artist is the spirit of repetition until freedom reveals itself and creativity reveals itself.

[60:33]

You have to have faith in, you know, if it's just, if you're being forced to repeat yourself, you know, if you're, it's, then it's not alive. It's, it's difficult. It's difficult practice. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Practice, practice of the musical instrument as it relates to our practice. The final question is from Mary Mosine. If birth and death are both life, why do we like birth and fear death? It may be hardwired. It may be, you know, an organic animal neural response. I don't understand it fully.

[61:35]

But it's, I think we're hardwired to, for, if you will, self preservation. Sometimes that is expanded to because we see ourselves as part of something larger. And we act in what's called, it's called altruism. But it's really just seeing that there's a larger body, you know, whether it's my community, my tribe, whatever, my nation. But I think that organically we're probably hardwired to preserve self, to preserve life. Mary may have a follow up, I don't know. Mary?

[62:40]

I do. Great. I'm sorry, I'm having to be with my new dog. Oh, new dog, that's great. Yeah, well, it is, but it's... Or maybe, maybe it is. My follow-up is... Oh, now I've got distracted by my dog. My follow-up is I don't want to say this. I want to say why, and I know that... It's okay. I can live with it. There are people and teachers in the world who won't answer why questions. Yeah. Why can't I believe that death is okay.

[63:43]

Yes, there's hardwiredness. Yes, there's attachment to the familiar, to the self that I know. But I don't know. There seems like there's something deeper about it, that it's hard to accept. It's hard to accept no me. Yeah. I mean, that's part of what I think is the hard wiring. But I think that that everything in our life, in our experience, the message that death is bad, is so powerful, and it shapes our minds. So this is this gets back to this gets back to, you know, how do our minds operate? You know, it's, this is, it's a heavy duty, it's probably the heaviest duty imputation that that one has.

[64:46]

So it's not surprising. No, not that's what we're supposed to be working on. I mean, that's what it says. We are working on it. Yeah. Right. It's the great matter. Right. But you know, I think about what is the uh the death of Ivan Illich yeah did you read that yeah you know he's wrestling with this question until the moment of his dying and then in the moment of his dying at least he has the at least you know, his author gives him an enlightenment and liberative experience. Yeah. But he's, he's, he's in hell the whole time.

[65:50]

Yes. And then he's liberated, but one understands why he is having such a hard time. Yes, one does. Yes. And, you know, All I would say, Mary, is you may not. You know, we were constantly practicing. You know, I'm terrified when I think of death as something outside. But as I was saying, the experience that I had from the inside was quite different. And I felt pretty free in that moment. Well, that was, you know, me. Yeah, we may. You can tell us afterwards. Okay. Okay.

[66:51]

I'll let you know. Or you can listen to me. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you all. We'll see you tomorrow.

[67:04]

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