Good morning. Good morning. This morning, I'm Lori Sanaki, by the way. I've been living here since 89 or so and done various things, so we'll dispense with that. I think I know most of you. This morning, I want to talk about a very fundamental Buddhist teaching, the four foundations of mindfulness. And I also want to talk about the customs and style of our practice here at Berkley Zen Center, and also about how we get along with each other and try to tie all those things together. So somewhat ambitious plan. The Four Foundations of Mindfulness is a very early seminal Buddhist teaching. It's found in the Pali scriptures, which are the earliest, as far as we know right now, written words of the Buddha.

[01:09]

and he starts the sutra. So this sutra was given to monks. Buddhist sutras, he talked to a lot of different people. There are sutras where he's talking to kings and lay people and various people, but in this sutra, he's addressing the monks and he says, Bhikkhus, which means monks. Bhikkhus, this is the direct path for the purification of beings, for the surmounting of sorrow and lamentation, for the disappearance of pain and grief, for the attainment of the true way, for the realization of nirvana, namely the four foundations of mindfulness. So what are the four? They are, the first one is body and breath. Second one is feelings. Third one is mind states. And the fourth one is dharmas, which we'll get to later. Explain that. Where's my little notes?

[02:11]

So it starts with the body. And in this sutra, Buddha does something that he often does, which is he compares it to a kind of craft. He compares what he's trying to explain to a kind of craft. In this case, he says, just as a skilled turner or turner's apprentice, when they're making a long turn is aware, I'm making a long turn. And when they're making a short turn is aware, They're making a short turn. Just like that, we can be aware. When taking a long breath, we're taking a long breath. When we're taking a short breath, we're taking a short breath. That kind of awareness. And I don't think it's that he means we should say those words in our head so much as more of a body experience. So since we don't have that many turners and we don't have that in our collective unconscious exactly, I was trying to think of another analogy

[03:17]

like that and I was thinking about like driving on an unfamiliar country road or like road in the woods and the way that you're driving and you're turning the car and you may not be talking to yourself but you're aware when you're making a sharp turn, you're making a sharp turn when you're making a wide turn, you're making a wide turn. Some kind of sense in your body of what is happening. and something that calls it to mind, calls your body to mind, or you kind of land in your body with your mind. So I thought we could just try this for a few moments. Just see if you can go beyond my words and your own words and just connect with a real felt sense of what's happening in your body right now and what your breath is doing.

[04:23]

Okay, thank you. And he uses this phrase, the body in the body, or the feelings in the feelings. And I've been thinking about it as almost like the body from within the body, the feelings from within the feelings, something like that. Trying to point beyond his own words. So that's the body. And in the body section of the sutra, he also talks about being aware of coming and going, your standing, walking, your physical position, how you're situated, and even the elements. And I've been trying to think, well, how do you do that? So he talks about the four elements. So it's sort of like you could experiment or experience sort of like your solidity. and your fluidity or the water in your body, like, you know how they say we're 70% water, like, what is that, can you feel the water in your body? The warmth, the fire, the warmth, and the air or space, you know, space in between things, or the air in your lungs and all.

[06:08]

So, various ways of connecting with your physical experience. That's the first foundation. The second foundation is feelings. And in this, he's talking about more than what emotions, the way we think of feelings as more emotions. He's really talking, but I think it includes that. He's talking about the sort of, the pro-con or the pleasant, they're described as pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. So it's kind of like your, You're almost like that one-celled amoeba that's going towards nourishment and going away from threat somehow. It's like that very visceral response to your experience. And he talks about worldly and unworldly feelings. I've noticed that I think about it as physical feelings, emotional feelings, and sort of existential or spiritual feelings. I have those, I notice those differences in my feelings.

[07:09]

And you know how you can sometimes, you can be having a painful physical experience, but even a pleasant emotional experience or vice versa, you know, that you can be having different, different valences around different experiences, different aspects of your experience. But being aware, that's the important thing is that we land in the feelings from inside the feelings. What are we feeling? And then the third foundation is mind states, states of mind, being aware of your state of mind. I'm gonna rush through that one because I just kind of have this thing I'm going towards here this morning. But suffice it to say that in the way that I'm talking about it today, the first three comprise all of your experience. Nothing's left out of the first three. It's either physical experience, a feeling experience, or your state of mind.

[08:15]

That covers everything that's happening. So then what is the fourth foundation? And I've been thinking so much and reflecting on our friend Santikaro, a Theravadan Buddhist teacher, just casually sort of cast off, well, that's where they bring in the Dharma. And I thought, I've been chewing on that, like, well, wait, isn't the mindfulness, isn't that the Dharma from the very beginning? And what does he mean? But I think, so where I've landed or what I think is, This is the real genius of Shakyamuni Buddha. He's saying, he's not coming in with his doctrine from the beginning. He's saying, connect with your own experience. Experience what's happening for you right now. And the word that comes to mind for me in this is respect. He is being very respectful and he's asking us to respect our experience first and foremost.

[09:19]

Don't be coming in here whipping yourself with how you should be more such and such and such. Forget that. Just be with what's happening right now. And then three quarters of your time, do that. And then one quarter, he brings in, that's where you can bring in the hindrances or the five skandhas or whatever dharma that you're working with now. Think about your experience in light of dharma teachings. But first, don't skip over, really land in your experience. That's the four foundations of mindfulness. And as we are aware, mindfulness has become such an amazingly common word in our lives. You know, for my job, I have this thing called Google Alerts. Do you know what Google Alerts are? When you have Google give you a list every day of every time that word was used in a news story.

[10:25]

And I have one on mindfulness. And there's just scores of every day, scores of references. to mindfulness, you know, mindfulness in the schools, you know, everything from preschool to getting your PhD, mindfulness in prisons, mindfulness with veterans, whatever it is, you know, whatever your problem is, it's kind of like the universal solvent, you know, you can apply mindfulness, which is exactly what the Buddha said at the beginning. But it's almost a little bit of heard it, been there, done that kind of thing, you know? I went to this panel this weekend of sort of like waking up to the fact that we're living on Ohlone land about that. And one of the panelists was talking about what her ancestors taught. She said was humility, gratitude, and present-mindedness. Pretty good, right?

[11:26]

And I like that. Oh, a different word. I was thinking, I wish we could come up with a different word for mindfulness, but there is no other word, you know, but that's great. I like that a lot. Present-mindedness. Just even having a different, not that there's anything wrong with the word mindfulness, but it gives it a little bit of fresh air to have a different word. So present-mindedness. And I think when people study mindfulness in these other ways, through mindfulness-based stress reduction or sensory awareness, somatic experiencing, all these ways that mindfulness is taught outside of a Buddhist context, and I think that makes it very accessible for a lot of people. A lot of people wouldn't necessarily, who wouldn't be drawn to come here, a little bit too many cultural trappings or whatever it is, have the opportunity to learn mindfulness. And they go to the class once a week, and then they go home and practice on their own. And you could use BZC in exactly that way if you wanted to.

[12:29]

You could come just on Saturday, come to Zazen, come to lecture, or take a class, leave before service, get out before we do any of the weird things we do. But so I kind of wanted to talk, I wanted to make a case for what we do. And I'm going to use, I want to use several analogies because I think that is in some ways more accessible or thought provoking. So the first analogy is that we are kind of like a theater troupe putting on a play or putting on a series of plays. And the way you end up, what that ends up being is like, you're always shifting roles. One day you're this, one day you're that, you're trying different things, and you're trying to learn your role, and you're trying to harmonize with the other people. And in fact, the content of the play is important, but it's not as, you know, in some ways, the real thing that's happening is the way we're harmonizing with each other as we're putting on these plays.

[13:37]

And it's tricky, you know? And we're kind of playing with roles. We're also playing with hierarchy. So sometimes, you know, you're in the upper hierarchy role. Sometimes you're in, like, I'm right now, I'm the practice leader and I'm giving the talk. But at breakfast time, the Saturday director might tell me where to sit in the Zenda when I don't say, hey, I'm a practice leader here, I'll sit where I want. And that's sort of obvious, like everybody knows I wouldn't do that. But it's actually, there's times when it's very hard. Most of us have a hard time not correcting our server during breakfast. I didn't see anybody do it this morning. I think people got the memo, but I wanted to make sure people have a sense of, not just that you're doing that because there was a memo and there's a rule that we don't do that, but what is the flavor of that? And one thing that, I think was a big gift from our ancestors is they talked a lot about host and guest, which is a different way to think about hierarchy.

[14:46]

It's not like one up, one down. The host has a role, the guest has a role. And basically the goal is to enjoy ourselves, but to stay within the role. So, you know, when your server is coming to you, they are in the host role. Right? So you are the receiver and you don't, you know, you don't go to a party and say, Oh, you should have done all this other stuff. I mean, maybe you do, but that would be weird. You are trying to do the best with what the person is presenting you, right? So it's like the spirit of it. And this is a really important thing in what we're doing here is to be able to shift from host to guest. You know, when you're kind of in charge like Carol is today, she's kind of the host and you're the guest. But then if you decide to wash tea cups, you're gonna be more the host and someone else's, the drinkers of tea are gonna be the guest.

[15:47]

And for those of us who've stuck around here, there's a lot of joy in learning to be kind of light on your feet around these shifting roles. And that's a big, that's part of what we're doing. That's kind of a little bit unseen maybe. Maybe not. I think often about my son, Alex, and his friend, Omar, who people may remember live down the block. They played together constantly. Some of you may remember Omar. And their content of their play was incredibly violent. Like things were always exploding and blowing up and blood and just as violent as you could imagine. And I really had a hard time with it. I just wanted to redirect. I wanted to do something. And I, you know, I had this naive belief that like children who weren't treated with violence would not think of violence or something.

[16:50]

I had this idea and they were just totally not there with it. And And I think I mostly managed to restrain myself. I hope I did. But gradually, as I was able to restrain myself, I began to notice that what was really going on was the way they were playing together, which was, I do not hesitate to say, in perfect harmony. I don't ever remember them having an argument or a fight. They put on these little plays of these incredibly violent plays, and they had the arch enemy and various heroes, and it was very complicated, and they drew comics. But the way they did it was really wonderful to be around and to watch. As long as I kept my eyes on that, and not on the content, right? And sometimes around here, it almost seems like we have the opposite thing going, like our play is about peace, the content is about peace, but we're really getting on each other's nerves.

[17:55]

Which is maybe too bad, but it's also good, it's okay, because you have to conjure up the monsters in order to figure out how to deal with them. And how do you deal with them? That's the million dollar question. Part of it is mindfulness. And part of it is sometimes you fail. So I wanted to, so another analogy I would like to bring up is that we are sort of like a family. And I'm thinking of two different ways that we're like a family. One way is that we have ancestors. We have a kind of ancestors, we have a legacy, and almost like a kind of DNA passed on to us. You know, Zen, Zen is a part of Buddhism. Zen Buddhism is part of a bigger thing called Buddhism. And Zen does not have a doctrine of its own. We listen to all the doctrine, we're into all the other doctrine, but what we have are stories of our ancestors.

[19:04]

Lots of stories. And what we have are stories about within the later ancestors wrote stories about those stories and little riffs and jokes and puns and spinoffs on the stories. So there's stories and stories about stories. That's what we have. That is the Zen literature. And it's wonderful. There's a studies have shown, always a good way to. get people's attention in our current culture, that we have, we gain resilience. We have more resilience when we know the stories of our ancestors, both the failures and the successes. And at first I was thinking, well, we really, you know, all these stories from the past, they're all enlightenment stories. So we don't exactly have the failures. We only have the successes. But then as I was thinking about it, I was like, no, no, no, no. It's full of failures. Like, you know, the story of Nansen and the cat, which I think Raoul even brought up on Monday, very popular story because it's got so much drama.

[20:15]

See, the thing about the stories is how do they get carried around? They get passed on because they have drama and some meat in there. So anyway, Nansen is, so the two sides of the monastery, like for us, it could be, you could say maybe the board and the practice committee or something like that, are arguing about a cat. And we don't know whether they both wanted the cat or one wanted the cat and one didn't. Raoul kind of presented that one wanted the cat and one didn't. Whatever it was, they were arguing in, I'm assuming, a very petty way. And the teacher comes and the teacher is not happy about seeing them do this. He is very unhappy. And so he says, If one of you can say a word of Zen, you can save this cat, otherwise I'm gonna chop this cat in two. And they're like all dumbfounded, they can't say a single word. And supposedly the cat gets cut in two, but my theory is that no animals were harmed in the making of this story.

[21:21]

But it needs something like that to get carried down through the generations, right? So there's an example of failure, and a lot of the stories have that. The dumbfounded is a very common thing in a Koan story. So-and-so was dumbfounded and could not say anything. Like, even just to save a cat's life, they couldn't say anything, you know? That makes it even worse, you know? So we have our ancestors and our ancestor Dogen Zenji said about his ancestors. So he had ancestors and he's our ancestor. Isn't that cool in the way that works? And we have future generations and we'll be their ancestors. He said, revering Buddhas and ancestors, we are one Buddha and one ancestor. Awakening Bodhi mind, we are one Bodhi mind. Their strength flows through us and we bring them to life in our lives.

[22:30]

That's the practice. They were trying to bring the doctrine to life and that's what the stories are about. And we feel that inspiration. So I want to talk about us as a family in a completely other way. So this other way we're like a family is more the psychological way. You know, when we're in a situation where there's a group, we're part of a group and there's sort of like belonging, the issues of belonging come up and various things come up, we're sort of, there's this psychological function where you,

[23:32]

map your memories from your own, for example, childhood, like your own parents or lack thereof, or siblings on. So like, it's kind of like the teachers are like the parents and the fellow practitioners are like your siblings. And there's this, in a sort of pop psychology way, there's this thing like it's almost like a sin to project, like you're not supposed to project. But I say that is crazy talk. Of course, you take your experiences from your past, what you learned from your past, and if there's a similar situation, you're not going to start cold. You're going to take whatever you learned, good or bad, true or false, from that past situation and put it on the current situation. And the idea would be that you take your stuff with your parents out of your head, you stick it on your teacher, you straighten it out, and then you stick it back in your head.

[24:34]

Or you take your issues with your siblings out of your head, you stick them on your fellow practitioners, straighten them out, right? And then stick them back in your head, straightened out. but how do you straighten it out? That's the million dollar question. It's hard, especially when, you know, everybody's doing it at the same time. So there's something that I was always assuming we were all doing. but it seems like maybe all of us weren't or something. You know, it's so easy to think like something happens and you get upset with another person most likely. And it's so easy to think, Yeah, I was overreacting, but that person was being a jerk. So it's kind of a wash and then just move on, right?

[25:37]

So easy to do. But that is like throwing away the muddy water that you're going to grow your lotus in. Don't do that. Your upset is the muddy water you need. And how do you grow the lotus? By respect, respecting your experience, starting with respecting your experience. What does it feel like in your body? What are you feeling? What is your mind state like? What stories are you telling yourself? All of that. One time I was so upset. I usually am not feeling upset during Morning Sazen because nothing has happened yet. You know what I mean? That's one of the great things about Morning Sazen. But one time, probably more than once, but one time I remember I was so upset with someone from the night before that I was still upset during Morning Sazen, really upset.

[26:39]

And I was replaying what happened. And then I've told this story before, so apologies if you've heard it, you know, and then I'm going to say this and they're going to say this. It was like I was I was just completely immersed in this drama in my head. And then like maybe about 10 minutes before the period ended, I suddenly was like, oh, my God, I kind of caught what I was doing. And I thought, It's like a movie. It was really like an engrossing movie. It was exactly like, you know, the thing that was going on in my head was exactly like watching an incredibly engrossing movie. And then, you know, once I realized that, I was able to sort of feel into like how it was maybe something old for me. I didn't, it's not like I had the whole insight into every part of it, but like a lot of the charge went away as soon as I sort of caught myself as engaged in this activity, like this ramping up kind of activity of my mind.

[27:46]

And, you know, I probably had to work something out with, I'm guessing I probably did still have to work something out with the other person. But what I remember is that moment of like, oh my God, just catching myself in what I was doing. Once you catch yourself, there's so many different things you can do. You can get help. I really think that we need to get more help. We need to find more ways to help each other. Find many, many ways. At that moment, as long as you can just stop yourself for a moment, then the world is open to you. Anything can happen. You can get many kinds of different support for that. And we can learn more and more how to be that kind of support for each other. Like we need to engage in this as an activity. You know, you, sometimes you can just think, well, does my, whatever you're feeling, if you're feeling something extreme, extreme anger, extremely isolated, extreme,

[29:02]

need to lash out, whatever it is. Think about the situation you're in. Does it match? Intuitively, do you have a sense that this feeling matches this current situation? Because if it's about the way they're passing the Gamassi or something, I can tell you, no, it does not match. And many things are like that. And even when it kind of does match, still, if you're feeling powerless, if you're feeling some extreme thing, there's probably something old going on. And you're gonna be benefited if you can barf that up and look at it, and you know, it's not necessarily gonna change. We're still gonna be built the way we're built. But this is the great opportunity we have in our style of practice, I think, because we're in each other's business a lot.

[30:11]

And therefore, we need to create more ways to to grow these lotuses. And if you missed your opportunity, you threw away the money, don't worry, there's plenty more where that came from. But still, it actually, it can escalate in a not good way and we don't want that. It's very hard on everybody else and it's hard on you. And, you know, again, just going back to the beginning, it starts with that respect, respect your experience, because it's really easy. Another thing that's really easy to think is I shouldn't be feeling this way. And I even introduced that, like I started that ball rolling because I said it doesn't match, right? I shouldn't be feeling this way. It doesn't match. So before you go, that's kind of like introducing the Dharma, right? That's the fourth one.

[31:13]

Before you go to that one, Do the first three. What is it that I'm feeling? Respect, have some respect for what's happening for yourself. What is it that I'm feeling? What's my physical experience? What's my emotional experience? What is the story I'm telling? And get help. And, you know, it's a great thing. Like, you feel so liberated when, you know, like that morning I felt so liberated once I snapped out of that. It's a wonderful feeling and a wonderful thing. And, you know, everybody who's here, who's joined us, has an intention to be more aware and be more mindful, more present-mindedness, more respectful of ourselves and each other. more compassionate. And you know, that's the one thing you can know.

[32:17]

In any given moment, we may or may not be remembering that, but you know that that is what we're doing here. I think that's it actually. Thoughts? Megan, then Jeff. How much of the turmoil that we have with them do you think has to do with fear? Probably, I mean, I think that when we built these knowledges from our childhood, they were all about survival, all about protecting ourselves. So they're mostly all about fear in a way when you get down to the bottom.

[33:18]

Yeah. Is that what you think? What do you think? I just find myself when I analyze these things, mostly it's got to do with fear. And you know, that's where I go with that is you may not get rid of that fear because there's a certain survival element to it. It's hard to get at that, you know? But just the mindfulness, knowing that. All you need is that, all you need is that present-minded moment, that moment to stop. Once the moment's happened, The world's opened up again. Nothing has to happen, and anything could happen. Jeff? Thank you so much for a really great talk. Oh, thank you, Jeff. That was really lovely. Here's a right take issue.

[34:18]

Right take? So, where I differ a little bit, the things that you said that kind of came up in my call, is you said the weird things that we do This is, all of the things that we do, and all of our practice, led me to an understanding of what's natural. And this idea that everything is natural. And everything is in this realm of a natural experience that includes everything that you talked about. When you were saying, more compassionate, more present-minded, I stripped more out of every one of those four letters. I want to be compassionate, I want to be spacious, I want to manifest those things all the time. And so that's the thing I turn to when I'm in conflict, or when some emotional event arises, or when I have a big reaction. And I sort of know my patterns. I've stopped finding them in the past. I won't do that anymore. I had conflict at work this week. And it was around this idea that somebody was treating me out of hand without explaining what was going on.

[35:21]

And I'm the wrong guy to push around. It's not a great idea. If you enlist me, I'll be your eternal ally, and I'll help you do everything. But if you kind of push me around and put me in a box, I don't react very well. And so as I was snapping and angry, I was speaking angry words, I had to stop. And I knew in the back of my mind that moment you just referred to me at that. And then I made a choice about how I wanted to behave, which was to apologize and to clean up the mud and water and to wipe my mirror off and to make sure that I had peace with that person so that we could go craft a solution together. And yeah, because you can teach people, if you wanna be treated with respect, you can help people learn how to do that. That's kind of how it is for me. I'm just kind of filled with gratitude, because you said so many lovely things, and they're all grateful. Thank you, Jeff. And Ross, I'm gonna wait, because I forgot to give you, did you have something? Oh, thank you.

[36:22]

Okay, Ross, and then Susan. So the story of Omar and Alexander playing, you see the relationship as this genuinely harmonious thing, and that the blood and all that stuff is extra. How is that different than, say, as adults, when we witness two people or dissidents, and can we see that in the same way that they're also playing their roles in the game and that we're getting caught by some image of how they should be acting as parents or as brothers or what have you? How does this sort of differ between children's writing and adult writing? That's an interesting question. I think that could

[37:23]

be a very beneficial moment for you or for me to not lock down on how we're seeing those two people in conflict. In fact, there's a great chapter in the Vimalakirti Sutra that's very mind-blowing where they say, all these people who are killing people, and they list in detail these terrible things, and then they say, they're all bodhisattvas who are trying to wake everybody up. So I think for myself, to think some had to be able to have that kind of thought is good, but I don't think those two people are feeling that way. I don't think they're feeling the way Omar and Alex were feeling. I don't think they're having, I believe they're not having fun. So that is still part of the compassionate response would be to help them have fun and not that way.

[38:29]

Sue? Hypothetically speaking. It should be the same, shouldn't it? I think it would be almost the same, I think. you'd go for help the same place you'd go for help when you're mad at me, you know what I mean? If that were to ever happen. There's, I mean, I can see why there's a difference.

[39:35]

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder if it's harder to reach out for help In some way, is there, why would it be harder? Because it's embarrassing to admit to somebody that you got upset with somebody too. I don't know. It's embarrassing either way. I think it's just no one's going to come after you and say, you better work that out with that person because we watched you do that. But actually, most of the time when we're in conflict with each other, an amazingly huge percentage of the time, it's just those two people. And that's actually a big part of why it's really hard to deal with. So I think we should coach ourselves to still get help. I got into a really funky state of mind just cleaning my attic today and here and here and here's where I went. What do you think, you know? I don't know. That's a really good question. Linda, do you have an answer maybe?

[40:37]

Yes. Yay. I have a response to the issue that Sue posed. Anyway, call me. OK, never mind. Good idea. It's a good idea to make connections with people and identify the people who you intuitively know might, because what you don't want is someone who gets on your side and helps you run the thing more. What you really want is someone who is going to be very compassionate and empathetic, but yet, how do you do that?

[41:48]

That's really hard. They're not gonna lecture you, but they're also not gonna, like one time I remember, I don't even remember what it's about. I was like, it's still just a story. I was like writing something. It's still just a story. Like somehow that worked for me. It wasn't blaming. It was sort of like saying, yeah, what you're saying is true, but it's still just a narrative. And it just, sometimes that's, you know, you just need someone to slip something in there. Yes, and then Mira. when you are a sophisticated, wise practitioner. It's so hard. You know, because that voice says, what do you mean, call somebody? Yeah. What do you expect them to do? Jerk at it? And I'm saying, call me. Mira. you know, I don't see how you're putting the dharma, the fourth foundation of mindfulness, which is the dharmas, with your other part of your talk, which is about how we interact with each other.

[43:03]

So, could you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, yeah. I think that it might have to come in more specifically, depending on what... That's the thing about the fourth one. The fourth one is incredibly detailed, like is it a hindrance or is it... And then we have our whole psychological body of knowledge, too, that I can consider dharma. It doesn't have to be Buddhist dharma. It can be anything that is a perspective on the particular place you're stuck. I wish I had a better answer. I think that's a good question, but maybe other people will, and maybe Ken does. Yes? Well, just as a technical point, dharmas in plural usually just means things. That's true.

[44:19]

Well, but that's exactly what Santicaro was saying, I'm afraid. I mean, I've always before he said this, I always thought about the way you like it's getting down to a more minute way of looking at your experience than the other three are. But actually, I found in practice that doesn't really work, whereas what he told me really works. meaning introduce wisdom, some wisdom into the situation after you've connected to your experience. Introduce some wisdom of some kind. Mary, then Peter. Mary, then Peter. I think it is a piece of the dharma to say this experience is money, water. Yeah, yes, yes, yes. Peter, and then Sojin, and then you. don't skip over these. And the fact that they're not skipping over that, the fact that your actual experience, which you can perceive, is what is the gateway towards the question of how they bond with each other.

[45:38]

Right. Well, when kids are playing like that, they forgive each other. And they're friends. So they're playing to the extreme mayhem of their friends. And so there's a bond between them. What happens when they get older is the bond is broken. And everybody for themselves. So that's a big problem. How do you forgive and create a bond? with your enemies, so to speak. Because your enemies are your friends. Unfortunately. Unfortunately. But it's different when you're a kid. And we should not forget, when we're growing up, maturing means to remain friends no matter what the differences are.

[46:43]

So it's all a game. And I don't think all children, I mean, children fight all the time. I didn't necessarily experience that. You know, I think they kind of attained some height of something, Alex and Omar did at that moment. When you meet a new kid, you have a wrestling match. And our situation, I mean, I'm not trying to minimize how complicated, I didn't even talk about all the, a lot of the factors that are coming in to play, you know. gender even, that just came up for a moment for me there.

[47:46]

So I'm not trying to minimize that it's complicated to do. In fact, I'm trying to say, yeah, it's really complicated. So if you want to do it, we need to engage the armies or something. Love armies. Okay, go ahead and then we're going to stop. Yeah, I just wanted to add briefly to the topic of the idea of receiving and giving help. The idea of interdependency is still a pretty radical notion in Western culture. As a person who comes from, you know, Eastern Chinese family, it's been interesting watching how Buddhism is so mainstream in California, and I really feel like part of that I feel like it's still not, I feel like there's a hunger for that, but I feel like it's still not mainstream in American culture in general.

[48:52]

It's still seen, from what I see, it's still seen as weakness to need help. If you're a person who needs help, Yeah. And even the mindfulness is seen as a way to be more OK yourself, you know, like as a more individual thing, not as an interconnected thing, even though secretly you will see how interconnected you are if you do practice mindfulness. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah. I'm just speaking to the idea of how we relate to each other as human beings in American culture. I think the mainstream that means it's an inconvenience. Yeah, I think you're so right. That's part of the problem, right? Yeah, yeah. And I think if we could stop thinking of our fellow human beings as being an inconvenience, then there could be a radically larger shift in our culture. Not just Buddhist communities, because we're already kind of talking about that, but if that were more experimented with in larger culture,

[50:01]

And how do we, how do we do that? I don't know how, but it's just something I observe because there's just, because tribalism is normal in a lot of cultures, helping each other is normal, but it's not normal in this culture. And I think that creates a lot of suffering and loneliness and division. Yeah. So, so I think it's great that Buddhism has taken Mm-hmm. Right, and not really sunk in, in a way. It's still an idea. Well, let's do it. Okay, thank you all.

[50:42]

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