Good morning. Good morning. Our speaker today is Ekai Ujii Laurie Sanaki, Ocean of Heart, Being Time. And Laurie is a resident here. She began to practice in 1989 at the city center and then at Tassajara. I'm sorry, 1980, and then she came here in 1989. Lori is the mother of grown child Sylvie, and nearly fledged, and the wife of our vice abbot, Hossam Alan Sanaki. Lori was in 2002 and received her Green Rakusu of Lei recognition from Sogen in 2005.

[01:12]

Ocean of Heart is a very good name for Lori. She is one in the Sangha who represents the female line of teaching And we welcome the chance to hear her words this morning. Thank you. Thank you. How's the volume? Good? What I want to talk about today is the Buddhist practice called Kshanti, usually often translated as patience, also possibly translated as tolerance or Suzuki Roshi uses constancy in Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, so there's something about time, how you are in time.

[02:12]

It's also about your capacity for experience, so being able to include your experience in a wide way. I read this, I read something, I'll do a little back up, background, back up thing. I read something in this relatively recent Ketagiri Roshi book called, I think it's the Each Moment is the Universe, something like that. And it's really stayed with me. It's kind of, it's a little bit stark and maybe even a little bit sort of dualistic, but it's kind of stayed with me and I wanted to bring it up. He says that, usual way of life is to live with past karma as cause and delusions as conditioning factors or conditioning elements. I guess another way to say that might be to live with our unconscious beliefs, motivated by our unconscious beliefs and then affected

[03:25]

in manifesting those beliefs by our perceptions, which are colored by those beliefs. So, if we believe, for example, that a situation is not safe, a particular situation is not safe, then we would go into that situation with that belief, and our perceptions would be colored by that belief. In other words, we would clue into the unsafe aspects of the situation, perhaps rather than seeing that situation as it really is. which maybe includes the unsafe aspects or maybe not. And then that's the usual way to live, that we live. And then he says the way of our practice, and I would propose many people's practice, many people on the planet's effort or practice, whether they're Buddhist or not, is to live with our bodhisattva vow as cause and the the six practices of the Bodhisattva as conditioning factors.

[04:30]

Now the Bodhisattva vow, as everybody probably knows, there's a lot of different ways to phrase it. Sometimes it's often phrased around our wish to help others become enlightened before ourselves or something like that. I think some people are skeptical and especially women sometimes are skeptical of the idea of putting others first as a kind of, you know, reflexively putting others first. But I don't think we have to go there. I think we can just think about it as our wish to find our place in the grand scheme of things or something. Our wish to I wish that everybody finds their true self, everybody expresses their true self, including ourselves. So it's sort of like the first one is kind of win-lose, you know, trying to go from the win-lose way of living to the win-win way of living.

[05:41]

And then somehow it turns out that win-win is just when everybody's interested in win-win, that's win-win, you know. and so it's like take our money out of the bank of separateness and take our sell our stocks in separateness and put our money and our you know put all our savings into the bank of connectedness for better or worse, you know, just take your chance place your bet on that and So, then the six perfections or the six practices. I was thinking the six practices are kind of like six clowns with suitcases. They open up their suitcase and there's ten more clowns in there with suitcases, you know. So, it's like we say the six practices, but really everything, all of Buddhism is like underneath in all those suitcases, you know.

[06:42]

So everything's in there, each one of the six perfections has like 10 or 20 aspects, you know. So the third of the six practices is Kshanti, as I mentioned, usually translated as patience. So there's a general kind of Kshanti, but there's also very specific Kshantis that are mentioned in the sutras. And often in the Mahayana sutras, like one place, it's often mentioned at the very beginning of a Mahayana sutra, they will describe the scene, they'll present the scene on all the people who are listening to the Buddha's words in the sutra, and it sort of increases over the years. So the early sort of a take-off on the original Pali Sutras, so in the early ones there might be 250 or something monks, and then there's like 1,250, and then there's like 84,000, finally, when you get to the later Mahayana Sutras, there's thousands and thousands of Bodhisattvas.

[07:53]

And then they talk about all their attributes, all the things that they've accomplished, stages they have mastered and everything, and there is often, they have attained the Kshanti of such and such, the patience of such and such. So, in the Diamond Sutra, there is one called Anutpatika Dharma Kshanti, which is the patient acceptance, the patient acquiescence in dharmas which are nothing in themselves and which fail to be produced. Anupalabhidharmakashanti. The patient acquiescence in dharmas which are nothing in themselves and which fail to be produced. And in the Vimalakirti Sutra they describe the, and I don't know how to pronounce this, Anupalabhidharmakashanti.

[08:55]

Do you have any better suggestions? the intuitive tolerance of the ultimate incomprehensibility of all things. Now, I don't know, I can't tell from that laugh whether you're tempted to think, I don't really have that big of a problem with that. Or maybe you do. I don't know what you mean. You might think that's not my main issue that I need to learn patience with. Could you say it one more time? The first one is the patient acquiescence of dharmas which are nothing in themselves and which fail to be produced. You might say that things are not as they appear. That would be ... or that things ... you can't get the things to happen, you know? That you can't ... what's the phrase?

[09:57]

how often we miss the mark or something. It could be something like that. Patient acceptance of the fact that we often miss the mark, perhaps. Or there's a lot more in there. I noticed that when I was getting ready to come down, I tried to make these grass head guys on Buddha's birthday, which is where you make a little stocking with soil and grass seeds and then it's supposed to grow the hair. But mine didn't grow, so that's like the dharmas that failed to be produced. All the grass seeds didn't grow. I had to practice kshanti with that. The incomprehensibility? Well, that's a little bit easier. Sort of like the first one, only easier to swallow, maybe. Oh yeah, incomprehensibility. Sometimes I'm up against that, the incomprehensibility.

[11:05]

Trungpa uses the analogy that we're like clay on a potter's wheel, and Kshanti is how we find the center. I don't know if many of you probably haven't, but when you're doing ceramics and you're throwing on a wheel, The clay needs to be right in the center, otherwise it will fly off, kind of, or go off to one side. So, Kshanti is how we find that center. I was looking on Norman Fisher's Everyday Zen website, and he didn't exactly say this, but I jumped off from something he said. your internal GPS unit recalculating. You know how you turn and then your GPS, it wasn't what you planned to do, and it goes recalculating, and then there's like this moment. So it's like we're always, that's what patience is. It's like, oh, recalculating. This happened, now I'm recalculating to include this new information. I've been thinking about the fight or flight response and somehow it caught my attention that fight and flight are the same thing for our bodies.

[12:33]

Physiologically we have these hormones coursing through our system that are either fight or flight. So does that mean that somehow physiologically fear and anger are kind of like the same. We often think when we talk about our word patience, our word patience does have, I think, some maybe unfortunate connotations in trying to map it onto this Buddhist word, kshanti. It would be great if we could learn to use the Sanskrit words and then they would accumulate different meanings, you know, how words kind of accumulate different meanings. It would be cool to do that. I thought about trying to do that for this talk, but I don't know if I have I might not have the patience, we'll see. So fight or flight, so you could sort of say fight is like anger, like fighting, something that you're reacting to with fighting, or fleeing, running away.

[13:35]

But for our body, for like physiologically, there's something the same about those two. So I would like to propose that Kshanti is for that, for those two, in our minds, two things has something to do with how you, how you, well, I think it's probably two stages. So you first just steadfastly include your fight or flight response and continue to observe the situation, perhaps to try to figure out whether there is a real threat or not. And then over time, perhaps, as you keep doing that, you maybe don't have such a strong fight-or-flight response. So our fight-or-flight is, you know, if there's a snake, a poisonous snake there, or maybe being chased by a wild animal, that would be a good thing to either fight or flee, you know.

[14:37]

But so often in our lives, we have that response to other kinds of situations where it's not a good idea to fight or to flee. When I first was giving talks, my first couple talks, I had a really big physiological response to giving a talk before I gave the talk, really big. It was like, you know, energy kind of flowing through. It's probably what some people would go, you know, to a roller coaster or something to experience, but I was never someone who did that. But I wanted to do my best, you know. So I kept doing, when I was asked to give a talk, I would keep giving a talk. And gradually, I learned that nothing that bad happens. It's not that dangerous. And so it can change.

[15:51]

So practicing Kshanti can change. It's not just when we have a fight or flight, but it changes our perceptions of the world and of maybe what is a threat or something. I've been going sometimes to Peter Overton's Presence in Conversation classes, and I think I've been feeling, at least in the process of making up this talk, that a big part of what we're practicing there is related, is Kshanti, is some kind of, you know, wholehearted, steadfast, staying present with the other person in a conversation, particularly if the other person is saying or doing something that's causing your fight or flight response.

[17:02]

So it's like, you know, and what I always admire when Peter tries to model or models succeeds in modeling what we're doing. It's basically curiosity. It's like, oh, you think everyone who is for gun control should be shot? Tell me more about that. It's often, tell me more about that. Tell me more. Part of you, you're in a situation where part of you does not actually want to know more, but part of you does. It's like take your money out of the part that doesn't want to know more and put your money in the part that does want to know more at that moment. It can be amazing to watch. There's a certain seeing the ... what is it?

[18:08]

I want to say seeing the humorous side, but it's not quite that. It's something, but somewhere almost there, you know? Hard to put words on. Maybe you see the humorous side of your own response somehow. You're not taking your own response so seriously while you're not denying it either. Because Kshanti's practiced with our own self and with others. We practice with our own responses. And we also practice with others who we think are causing those responses, but maybe they're not. Maybe what we're really reacting to is the fact that dharmas are failing to be produced. I've noticed that like democracy, this is, I'm making this up now, but I've either noticed this or I'm making up somewhere in there. Democracy has these kind of two parts, you know, It's like the first part is that you want to be in a situation where you can speak freely and your voice can be heard.

[19:16]

And you don't want to be oppressed. You don't want to be in a situation where your life is threatened if you speak your mind. That's kind of the first stage. And that's a good thing. That's very natural. We all feel that way. Hopefully that's a very natural human feeling, I think, to feel like we want the freedom to say what we think and to have our version or our view be part of the conversation. But then I think stage two is when you actually want the other person's view, who you disagree with, to be part of it. We have to get to that stage. We can't have democracy if we're all just wanting to make sure that our voice is heard. And so I think this is also Kshanti, that we we can want to be in a situation where other people who see things differently than us can put forth their ideas and put theirs in, and we believe that something better will come out of us all putting our ideas out.

[20:27]

And we believe that. We can get to where we believe that. And it can be challenging. As many of you know, my sister is visiting me this weekend, and this is the first time that planets have aligned to where she could come here and hear me give a talk, you know? And so, when I've been preparing this talk, of course, I've had my inner sister critiquing, you know? What will she think of this? What will she think of that? And I've been thinking about, I think one of her my version of one of her questions over the years of my Zen practice is, well, being uncomfortable with the idea that we're papering over what's really going on with whichever perfection we're practicing, you know, with generosity or, you know, papering over our stinginess with generosity, papering over our selfishness with

[21:40]

unselfishness, papering over our anger with patience or our fear with patience. And so maybe that's the first part of it, is whether we're papering over. And I think it's really important for Kshanti that that's not what we're doing. But then the second part, which is maybe what we're doing, which brings up a deeper question, I think is, to do any kind of practice where you're choosing to cultivate something. So it's sort of like you're always choosing the weeds and the flowers. You're choosing which things to water, which things to nourish, which things to put fertilizer on. And this is definitely our practice. Thich Nhat Hanh talks about this all the time. Water the seeds of compassion, you know. We're choosing to water some things and we're choosing not to try to let wither, really, let wither some other things.

[22:48]

And whenever we do that, there's that element of choice and there's that element of the limited view that you're ... the situation you're in, your limited view, from that limited view, you're choosing to water some things and let other things wither. And it's sort of like, I think in some ways it's kind of like the argument against agriculture, right? I mean, there's an argument that humans shouldn't be doing agriculture. We shouldn't be choosing which plants that we're sort of taking on God's role or something. Choose which plants live and which plants die, or which animals live and which animals die. So it's a good thing to think about. It's a really good thing to think about. I think the idea is, I mean, this is to me where we have Buddha, Dharma and Sangha and where we have the ancestors, because we're actually not ... our ancestors, that's like they figured out a way that we can have this ongoing conversation about what to water and what not to water and what is ultimately beneficial for the greatest good and what isn't, and so we're not really choosing for ourselves.

[24:00]

We're sort of jumping on this bandwagon or we're We're being the hoe of the Buddha. We're trying to do the hoeing and choosing that the Buddha chooses, and we're trying to always question whether we're doing that, and how do we know when we're doing that? And all through the centuries, our ancestors have tried to share and preserve their ideas about how to make that choice, and what is that choice, and how to make that choice. And so another question that comes up is, so with our Zazen practice, one way to think about it is that we're sort of practicing on the cushion for the more difficult manifestations of situations that would require patience.

[25:13]

we sort of eliminate some of the variables and we do our Zen practice on the cushion, we develop and cultivate our steadfast, wholehearted inclusion of what's happening. And so then we can go out into the world and the more difficult, challenging circumstances of other people and things, we sort of build our muscle up for that. But another way to look at it is that actually What if the thing you're really reacting to is not what you think it is? What if you're misperceiving the thing that you're reacting to? And what if it really is Anupatika? What if it really is the unproduced dharma? What if it really is the inconceivability of all dharmas? You think it's these other things, this person or being put on hold or driving or, you know, someone hurting your feelings or whatever it is, but what if it really is that things are not as they appear, that really fundamentally that's what's freaking you out?

[26:21]

You know? Could be. Could be that. And so if that's true, it would behoove us to learn how to deal with that, actually. And once we can deal with that, then these other situations are sort of not as hard as they look. Because really, fundamentally, what's bugging us is that we can't conceive, you know. Things aren't fitting our idea. Things don't fit our conception. Or things don't act the way we expect them to. Not just what we want them to do. I mean, we can get over that. But even how we expect them to. It's pretty constant, you know. I was thinking it might be fun this morning for us to put out our versions of what we need Kshanti for, you know? Like I was thinking, well, faces, you know? Faces Kshanti.

[27:25]

Faces Dharma Kshanti. Because to me, I have a hard time with faces sometimes, because a face is like a window to a whole universe, you know what I mean? Each person is a whole universe, and then their face is like the window. And that's hard, it's intense. So, I'd like you to hear also, I have a couple more things to say, and then I'd like to hear you say what you think may be at the bottom, you know? Not the sort of obvious thing, but what's underneath that, what really scares you and makes you angry, you know? What makes you want to flee? sort of take a stab at him. So the last thing I wanted to say is, and this is something else that's been on my mind, it might seem a little unrelated, but I was thinking, a person in my little study group, we were talking about, we had a conversation about enlightenment, and first we sort of talked about our fantasies about what enlightenment is, like, you know, it's sort of taboo to talk about enlightenment, so we tried to break the taboo

[28:44]

and say what we thought enlightenment was, you know, just brainstorm, throw things out there. And then we also talked about, has anything actually changed for us in our practice, in the years of our practice? Is there anything that we think has been changed by that, even though we can't know what caused anything, you know, it's inconceivable. And one person said something I really, what everybody said was great, One person's thing really stayed with me. She said, well, I wasn't anxious. I was anxious about the things I didn't need to be anxious about. And I wasn't anxious about the things I didn't need to be anxious about. And so she shifted, which I think is sort of gets back to this thing Category said. It's like you shift your concern from the bogus fakie things that the snakes and tigers that you think are out there and you start to get on to the ones that are really you need to be concerned about for your own and everyone else's benefit.

[29:53]

And I thought somehow I jumped from there to it's kind of like the Buddha laid down a new beat, you know, like if there's this big music going on and then the Buddha like put down this new beat which is maybe like a new beat, but also like the most fundamental beat at the same time. And we're just trying to play our music to that new beat somehow. And in the meantime, all the other beats are happening. And so you know how you get pulled into these other beats, or these other, you know, like if you're trying to sing harmony, you get pulled into the note of the person that's right next to you. but you were trying to sing this new song or play along to this new beat. And so what do we need to do to be able to do that? We need to listen, we need to immerse ourselves as much as we can, listen to the new beat whenever we can, in whatever way we can. Keep listening, because you know how it is, the more you hear it, the more you naturally are going to play along to it.

[31:03]

Your body is just, your body, mind, spirit are going to go that way. And you need to try it, right? You need to try, you need to play the music and try to see if you can play along with that. And just see what happens. Just try it. So, did you have anything to add or subtract? Oh, even if not, it'll be conceivable. We'll have patience. Historically, women have been the servants of men, more or less. For a couple thousand, a couple three thousand years at least, yeah. And so, you know, you said that in the modern movement, the woman doesn't want to be the servant.

[32:05]

serving is cutting the backburner rather than the frontburner. But I think that given our Dharma heritage that we don't have to be concerned about that. Women, they do. I think all our women are great servants and all our men are great servants. So we should be equally serving each other rather than women serving men. Amen. Yes, amen. Amen. Amen. I know Linda will have a question about that. Well, you have created the propitious circumstances for me to question that. I was having an image as you said that, you know, let's say you have a beaver dam and one part of it has gotten weak. and the water is leaking through that. So you just naturally have to build up the strength of that.

[33:13]

So it doesn't necessarily work if our whole culture is conditioned for one gender to serve and one to be served, to say, oh, well, they should all serve, and they should be equal. You might have to build up the strength in the men to learn how to serve, and you might have to build up the strength in the women to learn how to think in different ways. That's what we do. Huh? That's our practice. I'm saying that is our practice. Yeah. And yeah, we don't want to paper over our intuition that it wouldn't be appropriate for me to put this person first in this particular moment. We don't want to paper that over with our Bodhisattva. Oh, but I have to because I took the Bodhisattva vow. It's like, okay, what is it about this situation? Because maybe the being that you need to put first is that intuition or, you know, your left foot or something, you know? What is the thing that I need to put first right now? Ken, and then Sue, and then a new person whose name I don't know. You mentioned seeing the humor in things at one point, which is good and can be accurate.

[34:22]

There's kind of a complement to that is conveying the humor, like I say, skillful means. If you're giving a talk or something like that, if you're in one of these touchy situations like you mentioned earlier, and it's not easy, where everybody can have a big laugh, because that can talk about breaking the ice, then they can say, okay, we have a different position, we have a different opinion here, but you know, it's okay because we're all kind of funny. or I am, at least, whoever, I mean, usually. Well, I don't take myself too seriously, so then the other person says, oh, well, I won't either, you know. Yeah, right, which I'm so happy you said that, because I forgot, it reminded me of something that I had meant to say, which is that when we have this so steadfast, wholehearted inclusiveness in the moment,

[35:35]

that is going to enable ... One of the good things about that is the creativity, a creative response can come out of that, more likely than when we're fighting or running. Fighting or running is like, okay, I decided I'm doing this, I'm fighting or running. It's not like new creative responses are going to come in at that moment. But if you have that recalculated or just hold Another thing I forgot to say was that there's that, I was thinking about that Roy Orbison song, Love is like a cloud, holds a lot of rain. I think, so that's like Kshanti, Kshanti is like a cloud, holds a lot of rain. And so how can we do that, you know? And when we can hold that rain of what's happening right now, then the creativity and imagination and, you know, kindness, natural, sort of natural flowing, things that flow naturally from us that, you know, don't have to be called Bodhisattva vow because they're just so natural, just flowing naturally, come out in that space created.

[36:48]

So, and then, we've forgotten you. Thank you, Laura. It's really deepened my way of thinking about Kshanti. And at the beginning, you said that some of our English associations with the word patience might not be so helpful. But the way I have tended to think of Kshanti or patience has a lot to do with waiting and being able to wait. And I also think that with the fight or fight response, there's a third response that I often can get into out of fear. Oh yeah, freeze. That's true, that's true. Disguised aversion. Yeah, very true. But I think there's also a positive side of patience, of the waiting part. And I wondered if you wanted to say anything about patience. Well, why don't you say what you... In a dharmic sense, how do you see that as part of our...

[37:53]

part of the paramedic patient's ability to wait in time. I flashed on, I have no idea if this is, you know, apropos, but there's a thing in the teaching of the bardo, the Tibetan teaching of what happens after you die, you go into this zone of bardo, but also they also talk about it as between every moment there's a bardo, you know. Well, one part of that teaching is that moments are not the same. Every moment is not equal. some moments have more potential than others for a shift. And so I would think that part of what you're waiting for is the moment, right, the right moment. And not that you're ignoring all the other moments, you're having to watch really carefully, watch every moment really carefully, so that you can feel that one that actually is going to shift. a non-activity, it's not just a negative space where you're twiddling your thumbs and wasting time while you're waiting, but that it can be, like Simone Weil writes about it, it's a state of readiness in which you're completely open and present.

[39:07]

And possibly at that moment, what you might be tuning into is maybe that's where the incomprehensibility, the inconceivability is. you're available to that. Somewhere I was trying to get away from it seems like. I'm not sure what it is. I've got to, you know, awaken with them. It's like, what, the service comes in, what does this person need to wake up? And sometimes what they may need to wake up is precisely the kind of sort of consciousness raising, in terms of gender roles or whatever. So, you know, it's kind of like, where the service happens, does it happen in a servile situation, or does it happen in a kind of

[40:14]

And does it happen in such a way that the other person doesn't need to know anything about you? Yeah. And doesn't need to know that you're making any sacrifices? No, it doesn't happen so that the person you're serving is more unconscious than they would be if you weren't serving them. You know what I mean? Yeah. That wouldn't be good. Yeah. Like, I don't know why I flushed on this, but Romney's secretary, for a moment he woke up, oh my God, she He didn't think, I don't know how he thought about how she gets paid so much less than him. I don't know whether that was an issue. But he did have a moment of like, oh my god, my secretary, right in this room with me, that I'm intimate with, pays this totally different tax. And that shocked him. That was a moment there. Yeah, right. That was the waking moment. Yeah, exactly. That wake up moment. And then he would fall back asleep. I'm so proud of myself. How often does this happen? I mentioned a Republican in a favorable light.

[41:16]

And you know what else is weird? I thought about that earlier, and I remembered that it was Buffett, but then I forgot again. Same difference, millionaires. They don't get mentioned very favorably here either, millionaires. Billionaires, whatever it is. Warren Buffett is our pet good millionaire. I don't get many points for that. Anyway, Andrea. Andrea? Full credit, Laurie. So it seems to me another dimension about the Bodhisattva vows, a way in which we as women tend to internalize what our role is supposed to be. Even the phraseology of, who do you put first? I think that's one dimension. But the other dimension is there is no one who goes first. We all go together. And so when we see that we can't actually helping anyone without helping ourselves, and we include ourselves in that equation. And vice versa. We can't do anything for ourselves without...it's actually the fastest way to get your needs met, sadly.

[42:31]

Get everyone's needs met. Create a situation where everyone's needs are getting met. For me, it unlocks a little bit this idea where We as women sometimes feel like, wait a minute, what does this mean that I'm supposed to be helping everyone before I help myself? Because there is no one who goes first. We all go together. I think it's telling that the vow says awaken with them. But the vow originally wasn't that, because the vow was originally save. And we changed it around this issue, I think. It's better. Who is it? Peter. of the iron ball, not the mosquito.

[43:44]

But going way back to something you were talking about, language, using the word kshanti as opposed to patience, I kind of wanted to put in a word for changing the English language. And through our practice, we know it's changing. As we know. I was just going to say, as we know, it's changing all the time anyway. And so maybe through our practice, we can change the way all listen to language and the meanings of words. Do you have an example of that at all? Patience. So keep using patience, but allow it to accrue new meanings? Yes. Catherine? Thanks for all of this. This has really been fantastic. I want to think about the moment between the fight and flight and the patients, and the idea that the patients will help us to really narrow the fight or flight moments to just those that help us to stay alive.

[44:52]

For me, the fight or flight, the anger and fear, is the crossover moment to where the part of me that can think and pause and have patience has left the room. And so how do we How do we move that line between the time that we can be patient and wait for the right moment, which is a lovely, perfect idea, and the part where it's over? And we've crossed over. So part of that maybe, maybe that's part of what I meant by when we off the mark, you know, like don't, don't have a, don't react to the fact that you missed the moment and have that be a thing. I mean, of course you might, but then if you, if you do, then have that be okay, you know? So, wherever you, whenever, it's all good, it's all going to be good, whenever you notice what's happening, there's a moment when you're holding it, right? You're just holding it. So you flew, you know, you got down the block, like when I was a little girl I ran away from home, you know, for a minute.

[46:02]

And I got halfway down the block and I was like, well, uh-oh, this is not getting me anywhere I want to be. This is not going to be good, you know. So, like, however you fled, or even if you've punched the person in the nose, the next moment you're like, oh, I remember I told myself I wasn't going to punch any more people in the nose. So now what do I do? Maybe I go back and apologize or, you know, something, you know. So, like, wherever you catch yourself is good. It's all good. So I'll make it a cross over the line. I just put the patients in after the fight. Alan? Well, I'm glad you remembered that piece about punching people in the nose. I feel safer. I was expecting an aphorism that I saw from you. of your expression, patience is the incinerator of defilements.

[47:07]

I wonder if you could say something about that. The incinerator of the defilements. That's something that our friend Santicaro, who lived as a Thai forest monk for several years, he's from Chicago, but he studied with this teacher, Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, and he was learning to translate his teachings, and so it's a Pali expression, I assume, but his version, because I don't think they had incinerators then, was incinerator, but it's really great. It's like getting back to the first thing I was talking about with Katagiri Yoshi's quote, when we're driven by our past karma and conditioned by defilements basically, conditioned by the confusion that ensues when we're driven by our past karma. So what they're saying is this moment of patience burns that up, burns something up that's clouding our vision, you know.

[48:13]

Pretty cool, was that enough on that do you think? Or did you have a better thing you wanted to say about? We really need the world to be somewhat predictable, otherwise we get crazy. Especially it depends... Do you have it? Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. Especially children or adolescents. Is there a place to go to when the world is not predictable at all? Is there a place to go to when the world is not predictable at all? Which is a condition for madness, basically. Yeah. I was thinking about you, too. Like, with my sister thinking about what she was going to think about, I spent a lot of time thinking, well, what's a neck? How is that going to respond to this? And I think that I'm willing to say and put my money down on, you know, a lot of people, there's this Tibetan idea that the worse the situation, you've got to get into a really difficult situation to test. And that's the only way you can develop patience is to be, you know, your enemies help you develop patience and all that's really good.

[49:18]

But I think, I just think that there's, places no one should have to go. There are situations that are not going to help you develop patience and that are too egregious, too hard, that your mind just explodes, you know. And so we should all work together to make sure that that is never a situation for anybody, because if we can't, we need to create situations where we can develop patience. And I always say to those people, or in my mind, I never say this to them, but in my mind I always say to people who say you need an enemy to to practice patience. Okay, you've never had kids. You're one of the only people who've never had kids. Because your kids are not like your enemy. Your kids are nothing even in approaching like your enemy, you know. They're not even not, you know, at all. They're just nothing like that. And still, it takes huge patience. I think because they're a new patika or something, you know. They're umbal, umpala, what's the other one?

[50:20]

Anupalabhidharma. Inconceivable. Who's that back there? Moffat? Hi. I was thinking about patience and the connotations that we have with that word. Yeah. And that it's passive. Yeah. It's suffering. It's enduring. Yeah. Rather than a positive... That's part of it, but the positive, you might say, is the practice of holding a situation or a response in one's mind. I mean, sometimes it's fight or flight. Well, what I was thinking was, we've been talking about it in both those ways, so it's about what you don't do, and it's also about what you do.

[51:22]

You tend to talk about it more as what you don't do. You just keep taking, and hope that, I mean, some other kind of philosophy, that it will be transformed in some way, in some metaphysical way. But I think to think of patients' Kshatriya, maybe it has Kshatriya before another word, and another way to think. More active. Yeah, it's active internally. Right. Good point. I've allowed us to go over time, sorry. So we're going to stop.

[52:10]

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