Good morning. This is interesting sitting up here. I'm used to sitting in the back on Sundays. Can you hear me okay back there? Let me know if you can't. So for some of us, giving these Sunday morning talks is part of our training, and this is my first Sunday talk. So it was suggested that I introduce myself. My name is Tai Gen. I began everyday Zazen, sitting meditation practice, nearly 20 years ago with a Japanese Soto Zen priest in New York City, and a few years later moved to San Francisco and continued my sitting at the San Francisco Zen Center.

[01:00]

Ended up working for several years at the Tassajara Bakery in San Francisco, back when it was a very strong practice place, and lived a few years at Tassajara Monastery, our monastery back up in the mountains near Carmel. I received priest ordination from Reb Anderson in 1986, and was shuso or head monk at Tassajara in 1990. One year ago this weekend, I returned from more than two years of practice and study in Japan, and this past year, most of this past year, I've been enjoying working in the Green Gulch Kitchen. The past several years or so also, I've had the great good fortune of being able to take

[02:00]

up as a practice working on translation of Chinese and Japanese, old Chinese and Japanese Zen texts, a number of somewhat long texts, but recently I've been working on a short text called The Gate of Sweet Dew, and that's what I want to talk about today, The Gate of Sweet Dew. So in Japan, in many Zen temples and monasteries, The Gate of Sweet Dew is chanted every day. It's called Kanromon in Japanese. At a couple of the monasteries I practiced at in Japan, The Gate of Sweet Dew was chanted during evening service every day, along with the Daishin Dorani, the Dorani of Great Compassion, which we chant here in evening service.

[03:02]

And here in America, at Zen Center, we chant The Gate of Sweet Dew just one time a year, and that happens to be today. So at five o'clock this afternoon in this Zen dojo, there will be a Sagaki ceremony, which is when we chant this Gate of Sweet Dew. Sagaki means to give food to the hungry ghosts. So you're all invited to come at five o'clock to this ceremony. It's one of the most colorful and interesting ceremonies we do here. You are all invited to come, and also we are going to invite various spirits to come, some dark spirits, some friendly spirits. We're going to invite them to come, and we're going to feed them and pacify them. So it's an unusual ceremony.

[04:04]

Instead of the altar being back there as it usually is, it will be up here, reversed, because we let in to the meditation hall on this occasion energies and spirits that usually don't come in here. They might be intimidated if they had to come take food from the main altar that we always bow to. So early in the ceremony, we use various Buddhist noisemakers and create a ruckus to invite them in, and then we offer them food and chanting along with incense and flowers and light. So there are two different kinds of spirits that will be invited tonight. So as the text says, we invite all our departed ancestors going back to ancient times, dwelling in mountains, rivers, and earth, as well as rough demonic spirits from the wilderness

[05:08]

to come and gather here. So part of the ceremony is we read the names of departed loved ones, people who have passed away this year and formerly, and departed teachers. So we read those names and invite them to come back and give them food to help them on their way. And also we invite these other strange, wild, demonic spirits, these hungry spirits, these hungry ghosts. So we do this, we chant this one time a year and do this ceremony, and we happen to chant it on, do this on Halloween, which turns out to be an extremely appropriate time to honor the weird and the unknown. I researched it a little bit, and Halloween actually derives from the Celtic New Year's Eve. So November 1st was Celtic New Year, and the night before was a ceremony to honor the Lord

[06:16]

of Death. And on this occasion, the Lord of Death allowed the souls of the dead to return for one evening. And all the normal hearth fires of all the families were extinguished, and there was a big bonfire lit to help welcome and pacify or dispel these spirits and souls of the dead. So it's quite similar in many ways. In Japan, they do the, they chant the getubs we do every day to feed the hungry ghosts, but also they do this special sagaki ceremony in August during the Obon Festival. This is a time of year in Japan when the priests, all the Buddhist priests, are very, very busy. They go around to all the homes of all their parishioners and go to the home, house altars and chant the getubs we do and other chants for the benefit of the ancestors in those

[07:21]

houses. And then in Kyoto, where I live, there are these big bonfires at the end of this period. It lasts about two weeks, but it's different times in different parts of Japan, so there's about a month of this, these spirits wandering around Japan, invited back. And then to end it, there are these big bonfires in various, in shapes of various Chinese characters lit up on the hills all around Kyoto. It's quite a big festival. So I wanted to talk a little about the Japanese Buddhist attitude and understanding of these spirits that we invite in this ceremony. So traditionally in Buddhism, there are six realms that we can be born into. There's the heavenly realms, there are the realms of the titans or angry gods, ambitious gods, and there's the realm of human beings, where we are.

[08:27]

Then there's the animal realm, then the realm of hungry ghosts, and the realm of hell. So those are the six realms. And in medieval Japanese Buddhist art, there are these very graphic and vivid pictures of what happens in hell and various tortures and fire and swords and various torturers torturing the creatures in hell. In the realm of hungry ghosts that we are particularly addressing today, the hungry ghosts are shown as having very, very narrow necks, like needles, and very big bellies. And they are always hungry. And when they try to eat anything, it turns to pus or blood in their mouth. It's a very sad fate. So actually, all these realms have in them Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, but it's said that

[09:30]

the human realm is by far the most fortunate because it's the most easy in which to hear the Dharma, to hear the teaching, to enter awakening. So most of the time I was living in Japan, I was living on a hill in the eastern part of Kyoto in between two huge old Buddhist temples. Each one had many sub-temples and a big pagoda and large cemeteries. And outside of my window, I could look out on part of one of the cemeteries. And every weekend, there'd be people coming to the cemetery, making offerings to their family graves. And there'd be priests reciting services for their family graves.

[10:32]

And there were also, all the time, these big black crows that would help take care of the offerings later, and were very noisy and quite impressive. So Japanese people identify themselves as Buddhists based on, and identify with the Buddhist school and temple based on where their family burial place is. And they take this quite seriously, still. So I really loved the cemeteries there. There were old, different kinds of old stones and old memorials and many statues of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and some of them very old and faded. Some of these stones had been there literally a thousand years. So I found it quite a peaceful place to walk around, and a very peaceful feeling. So I'd walk around day and night and come and go to my house, passing through these tombstones. And one of the pagodas, this was at the top of a hill, surrounded by many, many of these

[11:32]

tombstones, and had a great view of Kyoto. But Japanese people are afraid, not even only at night, but during the day, unless they're going to make an offering. They don't usually walk in these cemeteries. They take these spirits quite seriously. So in all the time that I walked around these cemeteries, I never myself saw a ghost. One of the things, though, I was doing in Japan also was teaching English, teaching college classes. And that was kind of, one of the things that was nice about that is you could do anything you wanted to, as long as it was in English. So for some of the classes, I had them read these old Japanese ghost stories. There was a guy named Lafcadio Hearn, who came from America to Japan at the end of the

[12:32]

19th century, and he was kind of a weird guy. He was interested in strange things, and he wrote a lot of stories in English about old Buddhist stories and old Japanese folklore, and a lot of old ghost stories. And these were all Japanese stories, and some that he heard about just from living in Japan. And I think actually, maybe one of my first contacts with Japanese Buddhism was through reading these strange old stories in high school. Anyway, I gave some of these stories to my classes to read, and I asked the students if they'd ever seen a ghost. So I'm not going to ask this audience if you've ever seen a ghost. You might be embarrassed. But I'll ask you, how many of you have yourself seen a ghost or know somebody who has seen a ghost? Anybody? Oh. Quite impressive. Yeah, I talked to about a dozen people in Kyoto who had seen, who had themselves seen

[13:42]

ghosts. Interestingly, most of them were women. Maybe women are more sensitive to this realm. But a couple of the stories were scary. One friend of mine actually had been attacked by a ghost and saw them regularly, and she was quite afraid of them. Some of the stories were not so scary. There was one girl who talked about coming home from school when she was about seven or eight, and she saw her grandmother, who lived with her family, sitting on the roof of their house and waving at her and smiling. And she waved back and smiled. And Japanese houses have these wonderful roofs. There's still many houses in Kyoto that are just one or two stories and beautiful roofs. Anyway, she was sitting up there on the roof, and the granddaughter was surprised because the grandmother had been pretty sick, and here she was up on the roof, and she went

[14:44]

in the house and found out that her grandmother had died earlier that morning. So one of the things I feel from this whole event of Halloween, both Halloween and the Sagaki ceremony, is this unknown realm. This is an occasion when we honor the unknown, the weird, all the strange realms that we don't usually like to think of. So part of this is that we don't know. We just don't know what happens after people die, no matter how much I study Buddhist teachings about this or how much they make sense to me. I don't know. I've heard that even the Dalai Lama, who's supposed to be the 14th incarnation, says

[15:47]

he doesn't remember events of his previous lives. So we really don't know. And I feel like this not knowing is a very important part of our practice. There's one of my favorite stories about this from old China. There was a monk who was traveling around and went to visit a teacher, and stayed a little while, and then was leaving and went to say goodbye, and the teacher said to the monk, where are you going? And the monk said, I'm going around on pilgrimage. And the teacher said, what is the purpose of pilgrimage? And the monk said, I don't know. And the teacher said, not knowing is nearest, or you could say not knowing is most intimate.

[16:50]

Not knowing is closest to reality. So our faculties are limited. I cannot see the wall behind me, and those of you sitting up front here can't see Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, sitting on the altar. So we can't see ultraviolet light, infrared light, and most of the time we can't see ghosts. So also our intellectual faculties are limited, our spiritual faculties are limited. There is this whole realm that we don't know. So a big part of our practice is opening up to this not knowing, letting go of the knowledge or understanding or views that we have, letting go of those fixed views.

[17:52]

It's okay to know things, but also we can't hold on to them, we can't grasp them. So going beyond what we already know is what is called learning. So we have to be able to let go of what we think we know, of what we think the world is, what we think death is, of what we think spirit realms are, of who we think we are. We have to be willing to face that. But this not knowing is not kind of blankness or, you know, just voidness or walking around like a zombie, even on Halloween. So I like to think of this not knowing as kind of sense of wonder.

[18:54]

So wonder means to wonder about, a sense of inquiry or curiosity about the world, about ourselves, about what's going on. But wonder also means to appreciate, to have a feeling of awe. So we all have some taste of that when we see a beautiful flower, when we look up and see the blueness of the sky or a beautiful sunset or a child smiling. Before I came over here, there was a hummingbird right outside my window, just fluttering so fast and going from blossom to blossom. Wonderful. And with this inquiry, with this wonder, and especially today, this wonder and inquiry into death and what has happened to the departed ones, with this wonder about death, we can

[19:54]

more deeply appreciate our own life. So our Zazen practice, our meditation practice, is about opening us up to this wonder. It can give us a sense of appreciating just everyday stuff in our life, give us the steadiness to face the unknown, to be willing to not know, to be willing to just try something, to be willing to hear something we never heard before or see something we never saw before. So this sense of wonder and appreciation is, I feel, a big part of this gate of sweet dew. Sweet dew could also be translated as nectar or ambrosia. And it's said that this nectar refers to the nectar that is bestowed by the Bodhisattva

[21:00]

of compassion, Kanzayon. She sometimes has a vase filled with this nectar and she can pour that out on us. And it's said that this nectar saves beings from hell so they can leave hell. This nectar also technically refers to the nectar of nirvana. I went to a retreat that Thich Nhat Hanh did a few weeks ago and one of the interesting things he said is that nirvana is a tool or a technique for gaining awareness of reality. So nirvana means extinction. And in early Buddhism there was this goal of getting out of this round of birth and death and these six realms to try and become free from them, and that was called nirvana.

[22:08]

And this nirvana is a way of kind of starting to see what reality is. But in reality there is no complete extinction. So our energy, the spiritual direction of our lives continues. And all of you who are coming to the ceremony this evening and who have given names of loved ones who've left, you know that their spiritual direction, their energy, their being continues in some way. So in this ceremony we don't only feed the spirits. We also ask them to feed others. It says, we sincerely wish for you to take advantage of these mantras and food to depart from suffering, be liberated, find birth in heaven and receive joy. With according intention may you travel freely through the pure lands and the ten directions

[23:09]

and arouse bodhi mind, the mind of awakening, practicing the bodhi way, and in the future definitely become a Buddha. So the point of this is not just to put to rest these spirits but to help them on their way to helping all other beings so all beings may enter awakening. At the end of the Gate of Sweet Dew we say, by means of this practice of the assembly's good roots we repay the virtue of our parents' toil and trouble. May the living be blessed with joy and longevity without misery. May the dead part from suffering and be born into peaceful nurturing. So the point of this is not just to feed these hungry ghosts but to actually help them to feed others. To get to the point where they can also feed others.

[24:17]

So in the Gate of Sweet Dew there are two kinds of offerings that are particularly mentioned. There's food and we actually have a bowl of rice and sometimes other food that we offer on the altar to the hungry ghosts. And there are also dharani which we chant. So dharani is kind of like mantra. It's something we say. Some are short, some are longer. And they are kind of magical spells which we chant. Partly they have meaning and partly they are just sounds that have some positive effect. The word dharani also refers to memory. So these dharani we chant are tools to remind us of our intention and to increase our positive orientation. Kind of like the power of positive thinking.

[25:21]

So in this Gate of Sweet Dew there are ten different dharani that we chant. Actually one of them is for five different Buddhas. Each one of which has a certain, has a particular dharani with a certain power or effect. So you could say there are fourteen different dharanis. So one of them is the dharani for summoning deceased spirits to the assembly. The dharani for opening, breaking open a passageway through the gates of hell is another. The dharani for requesting Buddhas to supply and maintain food and drink. And the dharani of the different Buddhas have the effect of pouring the Dharma into body and mind, granting pleasure or opening wide all throats, satisfying the hungry ghosts with food and drink. So you may have heard that in Zen, Zen magic is just ordinary everyday stuff.

[26:24]

And that's right, just the ordinary everyday wonderful activities of working and sitting and eating and being together. But because of that we also bring dharani, these magical spells, into our everyday life. So here we chant the dharani for removing hindrances every other morning and the dharani of great compassion, the Daishin dharani, every evening. So part of Buddhist practice is to substitute positive habits for our conditioning. So we have various habits that prevent us from being fully here, to get in our way. So these dharanis are one of the Buddhist tools for dispelling these habits, these negative spells. We already have dharanis floating through our heads all the time. We have definitions of ourself and of the world, I'm this kind of person or that kind

[27:28]

of person. We all have these spells that are in our heads and then there's all the popular songs, thousands of popular songs and lyrics and tunes that are floating through our heads. Some of those may be very positive and encourage your practice and then you can use them as dharani and some of them maybe not so. So these hungry ghosts are also in our own hearts. So one way of looking at these six different realms, there are realms that we can be born into but also they're us, they're part of our experience. During the course of a month we might experience most of those six realms or maybe during the course of a week or even a day we might all have some sense of hell or hungry ghost or animal realm or heavenly realm and human realm. And particularly in our society, in the consumer society, we're trained very early to be insatiable.

[28:35]

All the television commercials, we need this and we need that and what we have is not enough. So we've all received some training in being hungry ghosts. I remember I saw a documentary several years ago about Mother Teresa and the story is she was riding on a train in northern India and as they say, something happened. And she decided to give her life to feeding the poorest of the poor. You probably all know that story. She went to Calcutta and started doing that and taking care of all the people on the streets of Calcutta. And gradually people heard about her and other nuns came and she founded an order of nuns and they established centers in other cities in India. Then at some point, Mother Teresa established her order of nuns in Los Angeles and New York

[29:44]

and San Francisco and other American cities. And some people got very upset. They said, what do you mean? America's not a third world country. Go to Calcutta where they're really the poorest, what are you doing here? And even more than that, of course, now we can go to any inner city in America and see plenty of homeless people, plenty of hungry people. So I feel part of this feeding the hungry ghosts is to remember the people, the humans and hungry ghost people who are wandering the streets of San Francisco now and other cities. So I've heard that if Americans ate just 50% less meat that the savings in grain from the inefficient use of grain for feeding cattle, that that grain would be enough to feed all the world's hungry.

[30:45]

But it's interesting, when Mother Teresa was asked about this, what are you doing here in America, she didn't mention the homeless people. She didn't talk about that. What Mother Teresa said was, I think Americans are starved for love, Americans are starved for kindness, starved for spiritual truth, starved for meaningfulness in their lives. So we all have this hungry ghost within us. And tonight when we feed these hungry ghosts, we should also feed ourselves. Even here in Marin County, which is very affluent, even here at Green Gulch where we have wonderful food and beautiful hills to hike in and nice meditation hall and good friends to be with, we all have this hungry ghost within us.

[31:45]

So there's an old Buddhist story about heaven and hell, probably a lot of you have heard it, but I'll mention it, say it again. So hell is this place where you go in and there's this big round table, and on top of the table are platters, and heaped on the platters are piles and piles of wonderful delicious food, all the most delicious, nutritious food you can imagine. And sitting around this table in hell are these people, and they all look miserable and starved, and they're all sitting there, and strapped to their forearms are these four feet long forks and spoons, and no matter how they try, they can't get the food into their mouths. So that's hell. Heaven is a place where you go in and there's this big round table, and on the table are platters, and on the platters are wonderful delicious food and nutritious food and all the best foods you can imagine. And sitting around this table in heaven are all these people who look very happy and well-fed,

[32:50]

and strapped to their forearms are these four foot long spoons and forks, and they're feeding each other across the table. So tonight when you give candy to the hungry children, remember your own inner child. And as we feed the hungry ghosts and spirits of the Sagaki ceremony today, let's all keep in mind how we can help feed each other and our own selves and find true satisfaction, appreciate the wonder we have already in our own lives. So happy Halloween. Thanks. They are in... So, anybody, if anybody has something to say, comment or question.

[34:05]

Please. I have a question. I liked your story at the end. I hadn't heard it before about the Buddhist version of heaven and hell, but I have a hard time... I've been raised as a Christian, and I'm really tired of the concept of hell. I have a hard time with that word in relationship to Buddhism. Can you tell us more about what that means beyond the story? Is it really such a realm? I don't know how to put this. Well, it's different from... Yeah, that's a good point. In Canada, you need to go to heaven or hell. Yeah, so it's very different from Christian heaven and hell. So in Christian heaven or hell, after you die, you go to heaven or you go to hell, and that's it, right? No, no, there's a third possibility. Or you go somewhere in between. No, you go to limbo first. No, I know. I was raised Catholic. You go to something that is called purgatory, and that's a possibility to go to heaven. Right. If you work. Right.

[35:05]

Okay. So this is different. In Buddhism, there's these six realms, and when you're reborn, you're reborn into one of them. And that doesn't mean that you stay there forever. In fact, it means that after a while, you go to another one. Same life? If you're reborn? Well, no. So there's different levels of this, right? There's, you know, in the same day, any of us can experience any of these six realms, although we're grounded in human realm, hopefully. Most of you look like it. But so the way it works, though, the story is that you're reborn into one of these forms, and then at the end of that, then you may be reborn into the same form. You may be reborn as an animal for millions of ages, but it's possible to shift. Now, it's true, though, if you go to hell, it's hard to be reborn in heaven.

[36:07]

I mean, it's not impossible, technically, but anyway, I don't know. But the teaching is that you're reborn into one of these realms. I guess in hell, you know, it's natural if you're being tortured, if somebody's cutting you up endlessly or whatever, it's probably natural to resist. And I would think that the way to get out of hell is to just kind of be patient and take it and eventually, you know, anyway, or to help other beings in hell. You know, that would be kind of nice. The thing about heaven, though, heaven is kind of sad. You go to heaven, and it's very blissful, and there are beautiful beings and beautiful jeweled trees and anything nice you could think of. And you're up there in the clouds, and heavenly beings live a long time. So this is all according to Indian Buddhist cosmology, right? But then, eventually, something very sad happens.

[37:09]

A heavenly being looks in the mirror and sees a wrinkle and realizes they're starting to get old. And even though it might take a while, that's the beginning of the end. And eventually, their wings fall off and they fall down to earth. When a heavenly being is going to die or starts to get sick, it's very sad. Because, you know, if you're in heaven, you want to stay there, right? And they know that that's... It's most beneficial, it's said, to be born in our human realm, which is not always pleasant, but we have a chance to wake up. So anyway, it's very different from Christian heaven and hell. And the character, the Chinese character, I don't know about the Indian word, but the Chinese character for heaven also means sky. It also refers to the emperor. The character for hell in Japanese, Jigoku, means prison under the earth, or earth prison, literally.

[38:11]

So they do have this idea of up and down, too. And I don't know if that comes from the same place the Christian idea comes from. But anyway, it's different. It's not like you go to one place and that's it. It's a round of births and rebirths. Yeah, can you talk a little bit about Dogen, or one of those guys who talks about the melting of emotion thought process? The melting of emotion? Emotion thought. There's something to the fact that, like, that's something to get rid of, but something that makes sense, like... Oh, okay. Yeah. So during Zazen, well, not just during Zazen, but particularly this is talked about in relationship to meditation, that if you sit still for a while and watch what's happening,

[39:14]

eventually, or maybe fairly soon, you will see that your mind is constantly going over this and that and the other, and all these thoughts and emotions come up. And we say in our meditation that it's important not to try and get rid of those thoughts and emotions. So it's a common mistake, a common problem, to think that you should get rid of thinking. But gradually, if you're just willing to sit there uprightly and face the scenery of your thoughts and emotions, their spaces, you can kind of recognize them and it loosens. But you're not trying to get rid of the thoughts and emotions. But it's possible to just be there with your breathing and not get stuck and not have some respite between thoughts and emotions. But thoughts and emotions aren't bad. They're just, you know, that's like saying that the trees are bad

[40:17]

or the people are bad or my hand is bad. It's just all the same kind of scenery. But we get caught by our thoughts and emotions, don't we? We take them very seriously and we think that if we notice we're angry, we think we have to do something about it and express it, and so forth. So we get caught. Yes? I'm interested in the whole notion that you brought up about being curious in relation to meditation practice. To get into the curiosity, could you talk a little bit more about relating that to meditation practice, being curious about and wondering? Yeah, well, when we sit, we watch what's happening. So we hear sounds and we see the wall in front of us and we particularly pay attention to our posture. And we watch our... pay attention to our breathing, our inhale and exhale as part of that.

[41:20]

And then we start to see these thoughts and emotions that come up. So, again, the attitude is not to try and get rid of them. The attitude is to just watch and to actually, not kind of to watch in a dull way, but to actually be alert. You know, relaxed, you know, physically and mentally, kind of soft and gentle, but to really watch and appreciate whatever it is that's going on. So that includes our own weird monkey minds. Does the inquiry come in at that point? Well, the inquiry is kind of just watching. By inquiry, I don't mean like you're trying to do something. Our usual orientation to the world is trying to fix things, trying to solve problems, trying to make things better. So some of these Buddhist practices, I was mentioning the Dharani, can be used as tools. So there are tools, but the basic orientation is not to try and do anything with it. So when I talked about inquiry, it's to look at it carefully,

[42:22]

but not in a way of kind of trying to analyze it, but to actually physically be with it, to stay with it, whatever it is, just to sit, just to stay with it. And watch it, you know, and see how it changes, because it will. Question. When you talked about, like tonight, inviting the spirits of dead people, I don't understand why any old spirit is invited too. I mean, isn't it all the wild things too? I mean, like the bond ceremony in Japan, but what you said... No, it's not just for the dead people. We don't, you know, kind of say, the spirit will let it, and the spirit, we don't let it. No. You're concerned about the spirits of the dead people getting hurt by the spirits of...

[43:26]

Yeah, I understand that concern. But, so, you know, I have to say again, I don't know, okay? But my response to that is that those spirits are out there anyway. We're inviting all of them, we're feeding all of them, we're pacifying all of them. So if there are spirits of dead people wandering around that cemetery, and there are also these wild spirits, you know, they probably have seen each other already, you know, or whatever, if they do that kind of thing. I mean, so, you know, I'm just guessing here. Anyway, in the chant, and in the obon ceremony too, they of course focus on the ancestors, and respect for ancestors is very important in China and Japan. And in Japanese Buddhism too. They go to the cemeteries because they really pay attention to everybody. I mean, all Buddhists have an altar in their home, which means basically all Japanese people, almost all of them have an altar in their home,

[44:30]

and there's a Buddha, and there's some plaque with the names of ancestors. And this is, you know, just what Japanese Buddhists do. And it's not... So in Japan, there's not so much people going and doing zazen or something like that. I mean, there are people who do that. But for people who are Buddhist in Japan, the way American people are Christian, one of the things they do is have this altar in their home. And they may not pay much attention to it, but during that time of year, the priest comes and does some chant. But usually, they also make offerings regularly. They don't have anything like they have in Hawaii, where they send in someone if things are wrong, they send in someone to be invited to... Well, partly these dharanis are used in that way. But I think the Japanese Buddhist attitude is not necessarily that you can fix

[45:34]

all those situations, but you make offerings, and you say these chants. And the Chinese is the same? The Chinese is the same, yeah. The Chinese also have, at the same time of year, in traditional China. Most of mainland China doesn't follow this. It's New Year's. Well, no, because Chinese New Year's is in February, isn't it? Yeah, that's when they have their ceremonies. Well, I don't know, I've never been to China, but I was reading about modern Chinese Buddhism, and apparently they do this ceremony, this Feeding the Hungry Ghost ceremony, also in August. ... [...]

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