This is our last class. Can you hear? Can you? You can hear. Oh, I've been speaking. I will speak. I will speak. A little louder. A little louder. I can hear myself. So this is our last class, and we've barely scratched the surface of our subject. I think that there's some varied views. There are varied views about the subject of faith, and there are various views about the text that we're studying.

[01:01]

And some people feel that they don't like the text, or they feel it's too academic, or something. But I myself think the text is very well thought out, I don't see it as an academic exercise, I see it as somebody expressing the Mahayana understanding of faith. So that's what I've been trying to do, is to give us that opportunity to explore what that means. in Mahayana Buddhism, because as the author says in the beginning, it's been an unexplored, largely unexplored, aspect of Mahayana Buddhism. I would say Zen, specifically Zen, because we put so much emphasis on wisdom

[02:12]

in Zen, that often faith is not explored or spoken about very much. It's one of those things that is so prominent that you don't see it. It's so all-pervading in our practice that we tend to not see it, because it's everywhere in the practice. And it's often spoken of as faith, directly. Dogen himself talks about faith a lot. and says that in order to practice, it's necessary to have faith in Buddha nature.

[03:18]

I think one of the problems that we have as Westerners is that we're so accustomed to thinking of faith as faith in something that we can't, as much as we hear that ancestral faith is not faith in something we tend to not believe are on the mind. Because when I talk to people about this, invariably it's brought up that faith is about something else. faith in something, something specific. And the whole thrust of our study is that faith is not faith in something else, or not faith in something outside of ourself, or not faith in a deity or any

[04:31]

I would say it may be deity, but it's faith in your true Self. Our faith is in our true Self. So, when we talk about what does it mean, faith in our true Self? Well, it means faith in our practice. Because there are the three elements, faith, practice and realization. So practice is the engine that brings forth faith and sustains it. So, because we are engaged in practice, faith is just there, but we don't recognize it because often we don't. I mean, of course we do, but often we don't recognize it because we think, well, faith is supposed to be faith in something.

[05:47]

And it's really hard to get rid of that idea, let go of that idea. So, unfortunately, even if you are a doubt person, I'm sorry, but because you're practicing, you have faith. Excuse me. So, and as I said once before, faith is really the sustaining aspect of doubt. Because faith sustains everything. It's the sustaining factor is the pivot on which everything revolves. You may feel, well I don't have faith, but that's just what you think. It's just an idea, because it's beyond your idea.

[06:51]

There are people that don't have faith, but they shrivel. It's that which fills our life, fully fills our life. And it's not necessarily something spectacular, it's just ordinary. Just ordinary. Ordinary mind is the mind of faith. We talk about ordinary mind in Zen a lot. What is ordinary mind? Well, ordinary mind is the mind of faith and nothing special. But it's the sustaining quality.

[08:04]

And Suzuki Roshi calls it constancy. Constancy is the nature of practice, continuous practice. Continuous practice and constancy is the nature of faith. I remember when I began to practice, Suzuki Roshi, when I began to practice, people could not sit zazen very well. There was a fair-sized sangha, but not so big, maybe less than this, maybe half the size of our sangha here.

[09:13]

and people could not sit very well. And Suzuki Roshi was always encouraging us to sit and to go beyond ourself. He was always encouraging us to go beyond ourself. So, you know, we were all kind of wiggling, our legs hurt, and we, you know, and he would say things like, don't chicken out. sit all the way through, you know, do that one thing thoroughly. You're doing this one thing. As soon as you decide to do something, do it, and do it thoroughly. And so, I can remember all these agonizing zazen periods. And, you know, struggling to get through zazen, struggling to get ... Everybody else was doing that too. but we were working really hard and somebody, people would say, well is this an endurance contest?

[10:19]

As if that was wrong. It was an endurance practice, not a contest. It was a practice, and with that endurance practice you brought out some spirit that you didn't know you had. So he was driving us to bring out a certain kind of spirit of continuous practice, constancy, and seeing one thing through to the end that brought out this wonderful spirit. You had to dig. down to the bottom of your body-mind to bring up this effort. And when you practice like that, you naturally understand what faith is, because you have faith in yourself.

[11:27]

It's just right there. You have faith in your nature. because you touch the bottom of your nature. So, after practicing like that with my teacher, that's all I ever wanted to do. And that's all I've really ever done since then. People say, you're still doing that? But they also say, every time I come here it's always the same.

[12:32]

So, This is how I evaluate everyone's practice. I don't mean put a value on it, but I can see where everyone is in their practice. And all I ever want to do is encourage everyone to practice. Well, you know, Saturday we're going to have a Zaikei Tokudou, lay ordination. So, in ordination we take refuge in the three treasures, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha.

[13:38]

So taking refuge is an act of faith, of course, because we put our faith in Buddha, put our faith in Dharma, we put our faith in Sangha. But we have to understand what is the real meaning of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. We put our faith in Buddha, not some Buddha outside of ourself or some Buddha up in the sky. This is Buddha. This is Dharma. This is Sangha. Each one of us is the Three Treasures, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. So sometimes we say, I take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. Shakyamuni, when he was on his deathbed, said, just take refuge in yourself and in the Dharma and in the Sangha. But basically, take refuge in yourself. in your true nature. So we're all, you know, where is my true nature?

[14:44]

Where is that? Well, it's called practice. So sometimes we say, now I return to Buddha, now I return to Dharma, now I return to Sangha. That's more of a feeling of It's all found within ourself. So this is the meaning of ancestral faith. It's not something outside of ourself. And then when we say, well, what is myself? That's another big question. that mean I take refuge in my brains or in my arms and legs? What does it mean to take refuge in yourself since there is no abiding self?

[15:54]

What is the self that we take refuge in? What is the self that we return to? So you say, the whole universe is the true human body. The whole universe is the true body of the Self because everything is interconnected. There is no substantial Self other than everything. So there's no place to get lost. Suzuki Roshi, I remember saying, you throw a stone somewhere, but it doesn't go anywhere. Wherever the stone lands, it hasn't gone anywhere. So this is hard to conceive, actually.

[17:03]

Well, I don't feel like I'm the universe, I just feel like I'm myself. But when you come apart, there's an old saying, when that day comes, will you be like a crab in hot water? So we have faith types and doubt types. William James, whose treatise I've never read on faith and doubt, but I have other references, talked about faith types and doubt types, and I've talked about that before. There are people who just are skeptical.

[18:07]

And there are people who are just optimistic. It's a kind of disposition. We each have a certain kind of disposition. The glass is half full or the glass is half empty. We either see things as from the bottom up or from the top down. Suzuki Roshi and Dogen seemed to have been face types. Although, you know, Dogen did have a doubt, and it was his doubt, according to his history, whether this is true or not, but this is the story that Dogen had this doubt. If everyone has the Buddha nature, Why do we have to practice?

[19:08]

Why do we have to do anything?" And so that was the question that he had, and it was driving him, because he'd studied Mount Hiei, he'd studied the Tendai teaching, which is very philosophical, and he wanted to study Zen, which is more hands-on, so to speak. But he had this question, and it was resolved when he went to China, when he met the Tenzo, or several Tenzos actually, and realized that practice is what creates enlightenment, and faith is at the bottom of that. So Dogen had a very deep faith, and he expresses it all the time. He wrote two fascicles, which I helped to translate with Kaz, on continuous practice, which is the practice of faith.

[20:22]

And they're the longest fascicles in Shobo Genzo. And one little story after another of the faith of all these ancestors. which is characterized by their continuous practice. So, I was talking about lay ordination. So, lay ordination is, of course, an act of faith because you're taking refuge in Buddha, taking refuge in Dharma, and taking refuge in Sangha. And, of course, Buddha is our self, but what is our big self? We take refuge in our big self. We take refuge in fundamental self. And who is it that takes refuge?

[21:26]

Which self is taking refuge in what self? So, small self is taking refuge in big self. since we're half Buddha and half ordinary human being. The half ordinary human being is taking refuge in Buddha. So, Buddha includes everything. Kadagiri Roshi used to talk about I think he called it religious security, the feeling of security, having faith in our own nature.

[22:30]

So I'll just read a little bit of what Kadagiri Roshi says about faith. He says, a Buddhist faith includes understanding, practice and realization. It is not a belief. It is not something that seems to be true. mentioned by somebody else. Dogen Zenji warns us not to believe Buddha's or the ancestors' messages as the truth completely. Even the Buddha and the ancestors can make a mistake. That's pretty good. This doesn't mean you should be arrogant and create Buddha's teaching as you like. We should accept the Buddha's and ancestors' teaching, but still keep our eyes open. This is very important because it's pretty easy to fall into the trap of mysticism.

[23:52]

There are lots of things we cannot know, but if we totally accept something we don't know, it becomes clear for us. This is our practice. Faith is to make the mind clear and pure. And then he says, Buddhist faith is to live one's life in clarity and purity. Purity is oneness between subject and object. There is no gap between them. Clarity is to gaze at eternity that is no mystery. It is to see human life, including death. This is most important for us. When I became a monk, there was only one thing I really disliked, and that was performing funeral services. I tried to escape from doing them, but it was too late, because I was already a monk. In a sense, I was very lucky, because there was no excuse.

[24:54]

I always had to face death directly. We don't usually think about our own death. Death always happens to somebody else. So it was really hard for me to see death exactly. When I went to the monastery, I thought I could escape from doing funeral services and facing death, but reality was completely the reverse. There was a wooden gong hanging in the monastery that said in big Chinese letters, the important matter of life and death, everything is impermanent. Every day I had to see this and I thought, my goodness, there's death again. In Shishogi by Dogen Zenji, which talks about the meaning of practice enlightenment, the first sentence says, the thorough clarification of the meaning of birth and death, this is the most important thing, the most important problem for all Buddhists. Boom, that's it, a big shock.

[25:58]

We don't see our life, including death. We just see birth and being, and we ignore death. For instance, if Zen centers were to offer lots of things that are good for human happiness and health, such as yoga exercises, vegetarian food, macrobiotics, I Ching, astrology, and various kinds of meditation, then maybe Zen centers would develop pretty well. Many people will probably come to them because people want things in order to be happy and healthy. But where are we heading? When Dogen Zenji was studying in China, he was asked by a teacher why he was reading the Buddhist scriptures. And Dogen Zenji said, I want to learn what the ancestors did in the past. The teacher said, what for? Dogen answered, because I would like to be free from human suffering. The teacher said, what for? Dogen replied, I would like to help all sentient beings because people are suffering so much. Again, the teacher said, what for?

[26:59]

So Dogen said, sooner or later, I would like to go back to Japan and help the village people. The teacher said, what for? At last, Dogen Zenji didn't say anything at all. Finally, there's nothing to say. Nothing to say means this constant questioning led him into a corner. He could not say anything. This is touching the core of human life, so-called death. But we don't say death, it's just keeping silent, that's all. So it goes on, but it's interesting. So, you know, many religious practices have promises of what happens after you die. You go to heaven. I think there are religious practices where only men go to heaven. Unless you're...

[28:02]

Yeah, because there's all this promise, you know, of young women that are there for you. So, I mean, in Buddhism, no heaven. We can think about this and speculate on it, but it keeps going beyond anything that we can possibly imagine. We can stop at a level of imagination. We can stop at a level where the mind stops conjecturing. But then, where does faith go? Because it's easy to rest your faith on something, on a heaven of some kind, promise of afterlife, and so forth.

[29:24]

Easy to do that. And it's really tempting. So I never criticize people, really, who decide that that's where their faith stops, or where their search stops. Because people need something. We need something to assure us so that it's not just a dead end, that death is not a dead end. It is a dead end. Well, you know, this dualistic way of thinking, So, in our thinking, like Suzuki Roshi says, and I also think that on, and many good Zen masters say, birth and death is the same thing.

[30:36]

Two sides of a coin. Within birth there is death, and within death there is birth. So, we leave out an object. So, to simply face and it has no object. The universe which created this being is doing what it does. We have a little bit to say about it, but not much. We cannot stop this flow of constant change, constant transformations.

[31:50]

So we have to have faith in the transformation process, which is endless. Do you mean karma? Well, not necessarily. Transformation takes place regardless of karma. Karma is our relational actions which create certain destinations. Just the fact of biological transformation. Karma has some play in it, but it's not just karma. It's cause and effect, which is both karma and non-karma. There's cause and effect, which is not karma.

[32:52]

and its cause and effect, which is karma. So, and some people speak of fixed karma and unfixed karma. Fixed karma is, you're born at a certain time from certain parents, and you have certain characteristics, physical and mental characteristics, and maybe various racial characteristics, black, yellow, red, white, so forth, those characteristics, which are fixed. You can't change those characteristics. I don't see them as actually karma, but sometimes it's called fixed karma. Because it's not something that you caused unless you believe that your past life has created this life, but that's another story.

[34:04]

But then there's unfixed karma, which you're creating all the time through your volitional actions. So, not all conditioned production is created by karma. Karma has something to do with it, our volitional action, but it's not totally so. So, this is universal activity, like we're subject to universal activity, that's what we are. We're just products of the universe that is continuously creating and transforming what we call ourselves. So what do we have faith in? No.

[35:27]

Not necessarily. You don't have to have an object. Then why did you bring up the word faith? Why would you do that? Because it's that which is the principle on which your life turns. Yeah, it's true, when we talk about faith we have an idea, that's true, but it's a matter of speaking. Well yes, it's a matter of thinking and speaking, but we're thinking and speaking beings. But it's not like we have faith in the object. What object do we have faith in?

[36:29]

Well, as you were saying, once you use the word faith, there is some implied object. That's what I'm suggesting. That object may be empty of own being, it may be transformative, it may be... You can have faith without using the word faith. Once you use the word faith, you're right. That's why Dovah didn't say anything to him. That's why Dovah didn't say anything to him. He kept being questioned, so what, so what, so what? Yes, that's right. Well, it's true, you know, that when we talk, we talk about having faith.

[37:34]

There is an object implied, but there's not necessarily an object identified. Yeah. We're going to stand up in a minute, but Ed has a question, so we'll... I wanted to ask what the relationship between faith and everything else is. Well, you know, we have faith in emptiness, that's right, which means nothing special, no special thing. Emptiness means no special thing in this case. There are 20 meanings of the word emptiness, but in this case it means no special thing.

[38:41]

So emptiness is the nature of all things, but it itself is no special thing. So we do have faith in emptiness, which is nothing, no special thing. And colloquially, nothing special. It's just, you know, when we sit in zazen, it's an act of faith. The total act of faith. You sit facing the wall and Buddha, I don't want to use that term, you're totally giving yourself away, totally letting go of everything. And at that moment, what do you have faith in?

[39:47]

I mean, where's your faith at that moment? when you're totally letting go of everything, of all security. Yeah, you're facing letting go. Buddha's letting go. You're getting close. So, Well, yeah, we can play with words.

[41:00]

But I think it's important to get to the meaning. You know, whether we have faith in something or not is not the point. Whatever you say, teacher. I don't know about Zazen, but when I was little, I learned to float. And I would say, they told me the water would hold you up. I never believed. Are there different qualities of faith, for instance, when one is, when one realizes one's good in nature versus when one does not realize one's good in nature?

[42:23]

Well, I think there are differences in realization, yeah. Yeah, I think that's, yeah, absolutely. Is it a different quality of faith? I don't know about quality. Or a different experience of faith? A different experience, yeah. You know, faith also has a lot of connotations, like trust is one, you know, what do we trust, you know. Sometimes it's hard for people to trust, for various reasons. And trust is very important. really difficult to go through the world without trusting. And there are a lot of reasons why we don't have trust.

[43:25]

And so, people are forced to find, well, what is it that I can find trust in? That's a big question for everybody. What is it that finally I can trust that is genuine and real? I used to teach swimming, and some people don't float. That's true. And, you know, their body density is such that they take a deep breath, and they lie back, and they sink straight down to the bottom.

[44:32]

And if your faith is, OK, if I just let go, then I really will float, I think you can But when you sink, you sink completely. Well, I actually think this is important. Because I've had a kind of fate where everything's fallen apart and I've been very disappointed. And things have not turned out the way I want them to. And that's not what faith is about, about things turning out the way you want them to. But there'll be a complete experience, which may not have to do with your personal desire, but it'll be very real.

[45:39]

Well, I think that's a really good point. Very good point. That's why in practice we accept everything as it is. To accept everything as it is, which isn't concerned with what you like or don't like or so forth, that's actually what faith is. Anyway, it's time to stand up. So, during our break, Andrea Thatch came and told me that she thought that my talking about half Buddha and half sentient being, ordinary being, that I was talking about, we would misunderstand and think that we were two different beings.

[46:46]

But I think you all understand that that means just two sides of ourselves, right? We are, you know, Buddha. Sometimes we feel like Buddha, and sometimes we feel like schmuck, right? But both sides are Buddha, and both sides are Shambhala. But I think it's important that we don't get mixed up. When we practice Zazen, it's Buddhist practice. Buddha is sitting. We don't say, I am sitting Zazen. We do say that, but it's only a convenience.

[47:54]

So let me say, Buddha is sitting Zazen because we let go of everything. And, of course, Buddha is also practicing as an ordinary person, so to speak. We feel like an ordinary person. When I'm in the zendo, you know, I feel this way, and then when I leave the zendo, it's all gone, you know, and I'm just feeling like an ordinary person. So that ordinary person is Buddha feeling as an ordinary person. Anyway, I want to open up for your discussion. It seems to me that there's some connection there between that and Zen practice.

[49:15]

Do you know what I mean? Between what and Zen practice? Between the constancy of effort in areas that aren't sitting in Zazen. Well, of course. Your whole life is Zazen. Yeah, okay. So practice your life thoroughly. That's the message that we've been saying. Practice your life thoroughly in Zazen, without ego. That's continuous practice. And you said earlier that people say, are you still here doing this?

[50:34]

And I get that a lot in my life. And it's the first time I realized, listening to you, that I don't have to take that personally. And I always got hurt with that, like I'm stupid, I should be doing something else. You should say, thank goodness I'm still doing this. I'll try that. How come you're not? for me, has a kind of pitfall of objectification of Buddha.

[51:59]

And I realize I don't think of my life that way. I think of my life as just like I have faith in, if I have to say, I have faith in Buddha Dharma, not as a thing, but just like this way of living works for me. And it's proven over all these years to be, and I don't I can't stop. That's the non-backsliding part of it, I think. It's like even in despair. But it's not a thing where being like Buddha is just Well, I think there are two things. One is, you know, there's the old saying, if you mention the word Buddha you should wash your mouth out with soap. And the other side is that in order to identify what we're talking about we use these terms.

[53:10]

Right. We have to understand that. They're just words, they're just terms, but they identify something, so that's why we use them. Yes, of course. But also, it's kind of interesting that you can say, I am Buddha becoming Buddha. And if you simply say, I'm just an ordinary sentient being who would like to become Buddha, who eventually will become Buddha, that's different than saying that, of course ... See, when you say, I am Buddha, that's not a very good term.

[54:10]

It's more like, I am Buddha nature. When we talk about Buddha, it's Buddha nature. And it's the nature, my nature to be this. So rather than talk about Buddha, it's better to talk about the nature. That's why we use the term Buddha nature. Yeah, right. Without objectifying, oh, I have a self, or there's something that can be given, it's this process of continual generosity of becoming. Right, so this is the meaning of no gaining mind. There's not something to get. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to get, you know, have knowledge or something.

[55:16]

that you can't, that you should not strive for something outside of yourself. Don't put another head on top of your own called Buddha. So we are ourselves becoming ourselves. We're ourselves manifesting ourself. or the self manifesting the self, which is called no-self. It's hard to, you know, we use these terms because they're, they may sound funny, but it helps our mind click. He said, Settle the Self on the Self which is becoming the Self, which is manifesting the Self.

[56:26]

for there's nothing else to do yeah but even though there are things to do there's really nothing else to do well That's my experience. You can do a lot of other things. Do a lot of things. What did I say?

[58:23]

A story? Yeah. You were speaking with an eminent monk, then monk, who was having a really difficult time in the community. And he said, I'm just trying to find out what works. He said, nothing works. That's why you became a monk. Thank you for that. Thank you very much. Yes. Well, I should know the name, the guy who said, no nose but I have a nose, but... Tozan.

[59:31]

It was Tozan. But what I'm sitting with is no suffering, but there's plenty of suffering. Yes. Yes. Yeah. That's right. So where do you find the no suffering? I mean, where does that come up? In the Heart Sutra? It's in the Heart Sutra. I'm also out of this, you know, Bob's unripe plum. He was like a plum, but the plum doesn't worry.

[60:32]

But I'm not a plum. And I don't think it's my nature. I mean, I think human beings are different. They worry. That's right. And so, because we have the imagination, we suffer. You know, there's pain and there's suffering. And suffering is a manifestation of pain, or is associated with pain. But pain, is not necessarily suffering. We always equate one with the other, but I think it's important to separate them.

[61:38]

Pain is just a feeling. Suffering is an attachment to the feeling. And we all have it, you know, so ... One of the main points of Buddhism is to ... It's not that we shouldn't have suffering, it's that we should know how we create suffering and how we can stop from creating suffering for ourselves and others. It's not like, you know, we should never suffer. Unless you have suffering, there's no point in trying to find out how to stop it. So those people that have the greatest suffering are the people who are making the biggest effort to find out how to not create it.

[62:46]

I mean, I would hope. So, suffering is important because it helps us to have empathy for the world. Because we have our own suffering, we have empathy for the world. And then we, well, how do we alleviate the suffering of the world? So it's not like we're going to do that for everybody, but that is our point of practice, actually. How can we deal with, I don't say eliminate, we're never gonna eliminate suffering. How do we practice with suffering? How do we approach it? How do we deal with it? How do we stop ourselves from creating more? So when we follow the various paths,

[63:50]

The third vow is, I vow to enter all the dharma gates, which are the paths to help us alleviate suffering in the world. But it doesn't mean that suffering will disappear from the world, because the world rides on it. But we don't want to create anymore. We should know how to stop creating it. An open-eyed faith? Open-eyed? An open-eyed faith rather than a blind faith. Oh yes, open-eyed. Well, that's right. There's a category talking about clarity and so forth. So, you're not just accepting, you're actually seeing how it is. You're seeing how it is. Well, that's acceptance. Acceptance means seeing it how it is, not seeing it in a biased way.

[64:56]

Seeing it with a clear eye, in the middle of the Euphorias, there was a little girl that had a little crow. so so So Suzuki Roshi, when he talks about having respect for things, it's very interesting.

[66:49]

He says, in our zazen practice, we let go of our thinking mind, we let go of our thinking, and we are free from our emotional activity. We don't say there is no emotional activity, but we are free from it. In the same way, you know, we don't say there's no suffering, We don't say we have no thinking, but in our life activity, our life activity is not limited by our thinking mind. In short, we can say that we trust ourselves completely. Without thinking, without feeling, without discriminating between good and bad, right and wrong, because we respect ourselves, because we put faith in our life, we sit. And that's our practice. And then he talks about how you have respect for things.

[67:58]

Because you have faith in your life, our life includes everything around us. It's not just my life as isolated from everything else. So all of the objects that we use, we take care of as ourself. And Dogen talks about this all the time, especially in the Tenzo Kyokun where he talks about watching the pots as your own head. Matter of fact, in the Zendo, in front of the tan here, the meal board is called Buddha's So we take care of Buddha's tongue. We're careful how we put things down and pick them up and how we take care of our bowls and our, you know, sometimes I see people will slide the salt across the table, you know, to the other side.

[69:04]

It's like, it just feels very disrespectful to me, both the table and the salt. It's like treating them as objects. So when we treat things as objects, we lose our understanding of our surroundings. So when we treat things very carefully, Dogen always put, often, I don't know about always, the term O in front of any object, which means respectful. It's a term of respect for whatever he's talking about. So when we think that way, when we see everything in that way, then we feel that we're in touch with our surroundings.

[70:10]

And when we're in touch with our surroundings, our surroundings create me, and I create my surroundings. So this brings forth a kind of wholeness in our being, that objects are not just objects. Everything basically is made out of the same stuff, trees and plants and flowers. It's all made out of the same stuff that we're made out of. Just different forms of the same thing. So when we treat things respectfully, we begin to understand what they are. And when we take care of things around us, we take care of ourselves. And he would talk about, when we moved into Page Street, I think I've talked about this before, usually the zendo is up top, if there's another floor, but because of the configuration of the building, we put the zendo downstairs because it was a bigger space.

[71:29]

and the kitchen and the dining room was upstairs, over it, so people are scraping the chairs across the floor. We don't think about that usually, you know, we just ... He said, it's not so much that it makes a sound, you know, it bothers the people below, it's that we're not respectful to the chairs or the floor, we're not really taking care of these things, we're not aware. of the life of the chair, of the life of the floor. Sometimes we sit on the table, but when you sit on the table, it makes you feel comfortable and it makes you feel big, you know. But it's very disrespectful to the table. The table is subservient to your behind. where actually the table has a purpose. We create tables for a certain purpose, and to respect that purpose is important.

[72:36]

And that's one way that we help to alleviate suffering in the world, by including everything, including our surrounding and taking care of everything as our own body. We don't always do it, I don't always do it, I apologize profusely for overlooking things sometimes, but it makes me feel really good when I do respect things. I feel complete, or much more complete than I feel. I'm more at home in my surroundings, more part of my surroundings. Okay?

[73:38]

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