Good morning. Another bright, sunny day here. So much is going on. In the wake of Sojin's passing, it hardly seems like a wake, it seems like it's just the beginning, somehow. But I'm wanting to try and talk about how our practice addresses the matter of what we call birth and death. Although it seems awkwardly obvious, under these circumstances, to talk about that, I feel Sojin is present to help me talk about it. That by his example, encouraging me not to worry and to just simply observe what is,

[01:01]

it was very good not worry. And I'm holding him in my heart as I speak. So, this topic is brought forth in a story in the Blue Cliff Record, known as Dao Wu's Condolence Call. And this has drawn my attention continually for some time. I'm going to read a little bit. This is case number 55. Well, first I want to say a little bit about why I'm interested in this.

[02:14]

It's something about taking me to the edge of my capacity to find equanimity in the face of impermanence. As I said, I'm really wanting to hold Sojin in my heart, and yet there are also many other reminders of the scale of massive change taking place all around us. So I feel that Sojin's example is, just take one thing at a time. And that's what I'm trying to do here. So, even though it's really difficult, and as I heard Ho-Zan say earlier this morning, yesterday was hard. There is so much evidence of continual transformation.

[03:25]

And at each moment this comes up, it just feels like it takes so much energy to stay present. So, I'm finding that as long as I cultivate my awareness of not knowing, I can bear the unbearable. And also by remembering that each action of body, speech, and mind, each movement as I'm making my way through the day, is a sort of commitment of the whole body, heart, mind. So I'm going to go to this case. I'm going to read a little bit of this, and I'll come back and forth.

[04:28]

Dao Wu in Shenyan went to a house to make a condolence call. Wan hit the coffin and said, alive or dead? Wu said, I won't say alive, and I won't say dead. Wan said, why won't you say? Wu said, I won't say. Halfway back, as they were returning, Wan said, tell me right away, teacher. If you don't hit me, if you don't tell me, I'll hit you. Wu said, you may hit me, but I won't say. Wan then hit him. And the story goes on. But what's really struck me is

[05:36]

Dao Wu's response to this question, which is obviously, has some urgency to it. And yet Dao Wu is being extremely kind and not offering some direction which would lead his student into a kind of dualism. He's simply saying, he's not he's not saying you're wrong. This isn't the right thing to do. He's standing on his own two feet and saying, this is what's real for me. I won't say. So this is in some way what I find reminiscent of Sojin. His recognition that there's no simple answer.

[06:41]

It's it's not enough to fall down the slippery slope of one-sided view. So in the commentary on this case it repeats the story and says Dao Wu and Qin Wan went to a house to make a condolence call. Wan hit the coffin and said alive or dead. And Mu said, I won't say alive and I won't say dead.

[07:42]

And then the commentator goes on. If you can immediately enter at these lines if at these words you immediately know what they come down to then this is the key to penetrating beyond life and death. Otherwise if you can't you will miss it over and over again until it's right in front of you. And I think it is right in front of us all the time. How to recognize that, that's what I find encouraging about this case is that this is accessible this So what the

[08:46]

commentator is suggesting is let go of distracting speculative thoughts and just allow your attention to be present. Practicing of practice of keeping not knowing close at hand. I'm going to read to you a little bit from what Suzuki Roshi says about this. Not about this case, but about the the question that I'm wrestling with. This appears in a book and no one known is not always so. Practicing the true spirit of Zen and talks by Suzuki Roshi. And he says in the chapter

[09:54]

called One with Everything. Be sincere enough to be yourself. That is the direction of our effort. Again, Dogen Zenji, our ancestor, said that if you want to attain renunciation from birth and death, don't try to get out of birth and death. Birth and death are our equipment for this life. Without birth and death, we cannot survive. It is our pleasure to have birth and death. That is how we understand truth. So he's pointing to this teaching that we hear again and again. That we try that our awakened mind is not

[10:55]

separate from our everyday life. Earlier this morning, I related a story that about Sojin. So I beg forgiveness for being repetitive to those who were there. But and it's maybe a story that many of you have heard, but I'm going to repeat it. And it's really what I felt about this story. I realized I remembered something that occurred at the Zen Center back when we were still at Dwight Way, Dwight Way Zen Dojo. And we were all coming to Sojin in the morning. There were a number of us arriving. And the police were there.

[11:57]

They were coming up the steps to the front door. And it was sort of a big question. What were the police doing here at this hour? And it turned out I can't remember. I wasn't present at the interaction, but we went upstairs and then later after Sojin told us about his conversation with the policemen. And they were wondering why all these people were coming into the house at that hour in the morning four or five. And he explained what we were doing, doing meditation and so on. And the policeman said, Do you use drugs? You can imagine policemen asking you that question nowadays. But anyway, Sojin said, No, we don't. And the policeman said, Well, don't you get there faster

[12:59]

if you use drugs? And Sojin said, Well, we're not going anywhere. And I was I remember that so clearly because Sojin was I remember him being very pleased or enjoying having had this really ordinary conversation completely by happenstance and finding the opportunity to bring forth some teaching around it. But the teaching itself is consistent with Dao Wu's message. Don't try to go someplace. Just find out how to land here. I'm going to read a little bit more

[14:01]

of Suzuki Roshi's. A couple of paragraphs before, he says, Wherever you are, you are one with the clouds and one with the sun and the stars that you see. Even if you jump out of an airplane, you don't go anywhere else. You are still one with everything. That is more than I can say. That is more true than I can say and more true than you can hear. So I also

[15:04]

had an opportunity in exploring this subject to think about all the ways that I have fallen off into kind of one-sided view. Some years ago, my wife and I were having lunch with an old childhood friend of my wife's, Susan's. They happened to grow up together in Monterey and actually used to go to Tassajara with their families to vacation. This was long before his incentive had the place. But in any case, this friend of hers has been an inveterate and perennial Tassajara guest ever since. I don't know how this came up,

[16:10]

this question of whether or not, he asked me whether I believed in reincarnation or rebirth. There was something about it that kind of set him on edge, the whole concept. And I said, well, I said something to the effect that, yeah, I didn't really take it that seriously. In some sense, I was trying to humor him. Although my wife, who holds a kind of different view, who actually got kind of mad at me for being a little lazy there. Just trying to agree with the guy, so to speak. And so I realized that if they're thinking about this again, and I actually called up

[17:13]

this friend and said, do you remember that? He said, no, I don't remember that at all. But what I remember was that and what I came to as I thought about it further, was that I was trying to give a correct answer based on my understanding and so on. And what's really important to me, actually, is more the question of whatever views you have, how are they consistent with what you're trying to do in your life? If birth and death are the sort of bookends of your conscious and intentional life, just hold that for the heck of it. You know,

[18:14]

how is it that you are dealing with the challenges and the possibilities for growth that exist in your life in this period, in this time, and at this moment? So having a correct view about what happens after the life is not, anyway, I don't find it that important. But I can understand the diversity of thoughts on the subject. Particularly even in the Buddhist world, there's a huge diversity of thinking on this. But I think more important is to say again that birth and death are a matter that all of us are going to encounter

[19:14]

and deal with in one way or another. Nobody can escape or overcome it. And I personally feel like my only approach to this is to live by a vow to hold the Bodhisattva vows with the intention that I'll go further forever, whatever that means. It occurred to me, some stories came up for me about the way in which we hold... I'm just going to tell the story first, and then we'll go back to it. This is a story that I heard on the radio years ago. It was about... I think the topic may have... the broader topic may have been

[20:15]

people who choose to leap off the Golden Gate Bridge. In particular, this man's story was brought forward and he struggled with thoughts of suicide for a long time and kept thinking about doing it and went through what I imagine is not unusual, lots of rehearsing and thinking about it and so on and so forth, until he came to a place where he went to the place, went to the bridge, after he ran and he leaped from the bridge. And his story,

[21:19]

of course, he's a survivor, but his story is that when he felt his hand leave the railing in the bridge, he suddenly realized this was a mistake. This isn't what I thought it was. And he fell and he managed to recover enough to make his own life and to promote awareness of this kind of problem. But something about this story, which I find extraordinary, is the suddenness of this recognition that it was not going to help him solve this problem of suffering, to take his life.

[22:20]

You think you're making a choice to do something which is effective, and yet you don't really know what that is. And so he simply had the opportunity to find out what that was. And we know about it from his testimony. Again, none of us will have the opportunity to not see what's real. An interesting story I had about my brother-in-law, our oldest older sibling, died some years ago.

[23:22]

He had a long-term degenerative illness, some form of Parkinson's. And he at some point decided that he wanted to end his life. He was not given to medical help and wanted to manage his own recovery or his treatment by himself, which didn't work terribly well. And he at some point tried to get people to give him drugs so that he could accumulate enough to end his life, which he managed to do somehow. And he you know at some point he imbibed the drugs and it turns out that he had he was by himself and they left the door ajar. And

[24:23]

someone came to deliver pizza to the wrong house and discovered him. And he was, you know, he recovered from what happened. But he never talked about suicide again. And he married the woman who had been in his life a long time. And later when he was on his deathbed he came out of a coma and the entire family was standing around him. And he called out to his stepson from whom he had been deeply estranged for years. And he said, Jason, come here. I want to tell you where I've been. The differences between you and me

[25:25]

mean nothing. So there's something there's something there there's something there's something there very powerful about recognizing confronting finding the willingness to accept your own passing in due time. And there's no there's no avoiding it. But I also feel there's something there's something that that inability to avoid this. I actually have faith that that's true

[26:27]

for everyone. Even though you can imagine some circumstances where that might not be the case. I think by and large I have faith that everybody has this in it for them. It's in the cards so to speak. And I find that actually kind of comforting because there are people in the world who in my imagination I don't like or I know them and I don't like them. And I might wish ill to them actually. And they might be powerful people who appear to you that they will never suffer as a result of their harmful actions. And I can see that even these people that I think about

[27:29]

beings that I might have unwholesome thoughts about they too share this with me. They share what you might call an intimate secret that we really don't know what it is. And we simply have to open to it. The sooner the better. This might be one way of understanding the admonition to love your enemy. To recognize this ultimate fact of humanity in each person no matter what the outside looks like, no matter what the history looks like.

[28:30]

It's not the same as passivity in the face of harm. I want to be clear about that. There may be extreme situations where the safety of people, yourself or others is threatened. And using force to balance the situation might be necessary. So, then again, how can we take just actions without falling into thoughts of good and bad? And how can we repent when we do? I've been keeping the phrase alive in my mind, back in my mind, dead or alive. Trying to

[29:36]

engender a kind of clarity about how I'm responding to any stimulus in particular. And it keeps the question of what is death and what is life. It keeps that question alive in my mind. And it's really clarifying and inspiring to me that there is no easy answer. I'm going to let Dogen have the last word here. And I'm going to read a few lines from his book.

[30:38]

And it's called Birth and Death, or Shoji. This birth and death is the life of Buddha. If you try to exclude it, you will lose the life of Buddha. If you cling to it, trying to remain in it, you will also lose the life of Buddha. And what remains will be the mere form of Buddha. Only when you don't dislike birth and death, or long for them, do you enter Buddha's mind. However, do not analyze or speak about it. Just set aside your body and mind, forget about them, and throw them into the house of Buddha.

[31:40]

Then all is done by Buddha. When you follow this, you are free from birth and death, and become Buddha without effort or calculation. Who then continues to think? So I'm going to stop there and open it up for questions and our discussion. Thank you, Peter. Just a quick comment about questions. You can ask a question via the chat box, which I'll monitor, or raise your virtual hand by clicking on the reactions thing at the bottom of your screen. And Peter, would you like me to monitor the hands, or would you like to? Yes, why don't you facilitate. Okay. Great, it looks like we have

[32:43]

three raised hands. So let's see. First would be Ross. Ross, please unmute yourself. Thank you, Peter. Hi, Ross. Hi. I'm thinking about birth and death and the mystery of that. And I'm wondering if right and wrong and good and bad, which are also dualities, if there's a way that we can work with those in everyday life in a way, or drawing from that koan and your stories in reconciling the two extremes, right and wrong. Are you talking about good and bad? Yeah, good and bad, right and wrong, you know, the various dualities, you know, birth and death, you know, I won't say, I won't say, is there a way of integrating the koan of the mystery of birth and death with our everyday

[33:44]

quandaries of what's good and bad, right and wrong, and how to live our life? Well, one of the reasons Dawuuk says, I won't say, is that he wants, he's not satisfied with the story of good or the story of bad or birth or death, that those words refer to something in each person that he is encouraging us to look at instead of simply understanding right and wrong, good or bad. What is it beneath that word that's alive for you? And you can consider one, then the other, then the other, and pretty soon you get down to what is it that matters to you? How do you, how does that manifest in your life?

[34:45]

I like that. So I think the reconciliation is possible, but it needs examination. Thank you so much. That's great. Okay, Hozan is next. Hi, Peter. Thank you so much for your talk. Wonderful talk. Can you read, there was a line that was fresh to me in, I think it was in Ingo's commentary. Do you still have that right in front of you? Yes. The last line of the commentary that you read. It says, You mustn't take it easy and let the days go by. You must find, you must value the time. Is that it? No. The, it was about you will,

[35:49]

something right in front of you. Oh, that's right. That was the, so in other words, if at these words you immediately know what they come down to, then this is the key to penetrating beyond life and death. Otherwise, if you can't, then you will miss it over and over again, even though it's right in front of you. Oh, even though it's right in front of you. Okay. I thought that you had said until it's right in front of you. I think I may have, and I apologize for that. That was a brilliant interpretation. I went and got all of my books and tried to find that commentary. What it said to me is that you're going to find out sooner or later. Yes, that's true. Whether you are, whether you're getting it now, or not, you're going to find, sooner or later you're going to find out.

[36:53]

Yeah. Might as well find out now. Right, but you can find out then. Yes. And it puts me in mind of the death of Ivan Illich, the Tolstoy story, where he doesn't find out until that moment of his death, which is, you know, it's wonderful, and it's also tragic. We want to find out now. Yes. And it's available to us now. Okay. Thank you. That was a great mistranslation. Thank you. Sorry about that. Okay. Heiko, would you like to ask your question next? Thank you. Thank you, Peter, for an inspiring and thought-provoking talk. The idea that it's right in front of us is something that I wasn't going to talk about, but it comes up every single moment, and in any given moment we have to defend ourselves

[37:54]

against knowing, I guess you would say. When you laid it out with the bookends of life and death, and I thought to myself, oops, do we mean bookends of this moment or bookends of this life? And I'm poking at you a little bit there. Okay. Because Sojin repeatedly to my ear said, this life and death that's right before you now, and hopefully you'll catch it, is life and death in this moment. Yes. So as bookends, what do you mean? Well, I meant provisionally that you can look at it that way, but even when you look at it that way, you still have, you can also look at it on various scales. Maybe it's birth and death like this

[38:56]

down to this. And either way, I think it's possible to find a place to stand, find your feet on the ground in this moment. Even if your view is something broader in terms of scale, the question is how do you find your feet on the ground on the ground? Do you think the man who found his hand on the bridge just as he went over was finding his feet on the ground as you're saying? Is that what happened there? That's when his hand left the rail. Yeah. That moment is when he discovered himself. Thank you. Thank you. I'll add this. My brother threw himself over a railing

[39:58]

with a rope around his neck and struggled to untie it. And then he fell and was killed by his fall. I'm so sorry. But it is some moment. He had some moment there. I believe he touched that rail. I understand. Thank you. Thank you. I'm so sorry. It's okay. Thank you. It's a long time now. Okay. Penelope. Thank you so much, Peter. Hi, Penelope. Hi. I'm in love with this phrase that we share an intimate secret. This is quite very provocative for me and beautiful to hold on to. I had two things come up. Many things as you were speaking. It's a very in-depth talk. There are so many

[40:59]

people that I've read describing doctors and other people who work in the field of death and dying. Who speak about patients or people in their lives who have died and then come back into life and almost exclusively say to whoever is there, the doctor or whoever, why did you bring me back? It was so wonderful. Why did you do that? Which I find very interesting and powerful. Something feels very resonant for me about that. The other thing I wondered if you would comment a little bit about is when we're talking about life and death in the bookends that are smaller ones in this moment, life and death, and then the larger ones, it seems to me that within each moment

[42:01]

if there is life and death, which we seem to believe and certainly sometimes my experience when I stay awake to it is that if I turn, my experience is if I turn into the death part, if I let myself go into it and be present with it, that there's always something that opens. Not what I'm in charge of and not what I think will open, but something opens. Is that anything resonant for you? Yes. Yes, yes. Various teachers say, Dogen in particular says, when death, basically when you're in death, whatever that means, you're completely in death. But that's also not permanent. So something will be born. If you

[43:03]

allow the completely to be... If you're not hanging on to some previous moment, something like that, that allows change to take place or allows you to recognize the change or something. Yes. Thank you. Okay, Jeff Taylor, please unmute yourself. Peter, thanks so much for your talk. There are so many paths into so many of the things that you said and they called so many things for me. But a couple of them that I really wanted to point at. When I think about the nature of birth and death, one of the things that Dogen said, among the many things he said, was we think not so much in terms of life and death, but birth and death as opposite sides of the coin and life being the coin itself. And that's true for me. I tend to frame birth and

[44:06]

death as the birth and death in this moment. Just because it leads me back to just this just now, without before and without after. Just this. And the great framing of the great matter of that which is born and that which dies as a matter as a measure of our lives, is less important to me, except when I think about the fact of what is liberation and what is freedom? And we can talk in many facets to ideas. But one of the ideas of liberation is how do I live in fear and fear of lack and what will I do next and what will happen? And how do I become liberated from the idea so that I might choose something? And I can land on, as Penelope said so nicely, on the idea of being fully in death, but also in terms of what is born and what's possible. There's a sutra that I torture mercilessly and it's probably heresy,

[45:07]

but back when the Buddha was still having cocktail parties in the park and somebody came up to him and he said, what happens after we die? And the Buddha looked at him and he said, well, how the hell would I know? What are you going to do next? That's a great question. And this leads me to the idea of if we think about this moment as a moment of seeing and penetrating and practicing, how do I fully inhabit right now free in the ideas of birth and death? And then the other thing that I wanted to touch on is there's been several comments made about the nature of suicide and I wanted to really point at what you said and I've heard this many times and I'm sure we all have from survivors that at the moment that they commit themselves to that path, they see into the great matter and realize they've made a mistake. Death

[46:09]

is death and we sometimes say there is no death, but that's very one-sided because yes, there is death. Yeah, I understand. And I really want to reinforce that because we never know where some of us are. And I think it's always important to say see through the problem, don't participate in it to the point of giving up your life. Yeah. It's not a real choice. Sorry? Choosing to take your own life is not actually a real choice in some sense. No, I thought you spoke well to it and thank you for that. Thank you, Peter. Thank you. I'm sorry, I was interested in much of what you said but I can't quite follow enough to respond in the way that I feel addresses what you're bringing up. It's all good. It's there for later. Good. Okay, Wenda, please unmute

[47:10]

yourself and ask your question. Hi, good morning. Oh, hi, Linda. Hi. I still get amazed by this Zoom thing that we can actually do this. the talk was beautiful, every word. And I just, you know, I spend about some time of almost every day translating this poet Kabir from India who's, you know, part of my life work. And there was one poem that this may be my Zen influence but the last two lines I translated as I'm not alive, I'm not dead, which I was going to send to you. But then I just thought when Alan pointed out your lovely reinterpretation of that line you know, where you put in until instead of whatever the other thing was in the book, that I would read you all this poem translated

[48:12]

from Kabir. He's got a much different kind of style from your Zen teacher poets, but I'll just read it out. And I'll end with a question for you. It's a short poem. The poem says, Wake up, man. How can you sleep? Death's troopers have blocked the roads. Get up. Clear your head. Find a way. King Death is a mighty foe. The White Crow has come to the forest and still you're not alert. Kabir says, Some folks won't wake up till Death's staff cracks them on the head. So that's cool. That's Kabir's voice. And the White Crow is a metaphor for white hair coming in. So my question, I really wanted to read it just for people's enjoyment, but I realized I also have a question for you. Should I feel really

[49:15]

bad about myself because I won't wake up and I won't wake up till Death cracks me on the head and I slept this morning? Are you in any position to evaluate whether or not you should feel bad about yourself? That's my sharp question to you. If I hear a voice that says you're bad, being asleep like that with so many wonderful teachings everywhere, how should I respond to that voice? How should somebody respond? What is the impetus underneath that voice? What is that voice deeply wanting you to do? Apart from thinking,

[50:16]

believing that the voice believes that you're going to respond to criticism, which doesn't sound likely. No. Put it another way, what is the need, the unexpressed need there? Well, some people have helped me by saying that actually listen to that voice and give it a hug and don't criticize it back, but just read it somehow sincerely. Yeah, it's hard. I know. All right. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you for bringing that up. Okay, Bob, it looks like you're next.

[51:16]

Thank you. Thank you, Peter, for your share. One thing that struck me is that when you talked about before he even went to the bridge, he rehearsed this over and over again and built up this reality. Yes. And then as soon as his hand left the bridge, he realized that this wasn't the reality he had perceived. And it seems like that's what we're doing during Zen is trying to stay in this moment. And one other thing that's related to this is that Alan brought up a few weeks ago that he had this near-death

[52:21]

experience, and in that moment he felt that everything would be okay, but everything outside that moment changes. Yeah. And can you speak to a little bit about that? You mean about the fact that everything changes? When everything changes, it includes everything changing. Yeah. The being it seems like we're outside of when we're not sitting and we're not practicing living in the moment. We spend a great deal of our time just like rehearsing or ruminating about life. Well, let me see if I can respond to

[53:21]

the first thing you brought up, the first way you formulated that question, which was, what about when some change takes place? Did you find yourself changing your view, your outlook? Did some tremendous insight occur to you, and at the same time you're pointing out everything around you is changing as well? And that's partly a result of the fact that you're changing, and partly an expression of not only can you not escape death, you can't escape life either. Life is a context, it's a torrent, a reality of stimuli and events and conditions and causes and conditions, and we don't have control over that either, which is one of the things that some people find really discouraging. And I do too on

[54:21]

occasions, so anyway, thank you. Thank you. Okay, Dean. You did say Dean, right? Yes. You're next. Hi Dean. Peter, how are you? Well, that's a hard question to answer. I meant the little answer. Oh, the little answer. I'm good. Thumbs up or thumbs down? Cool. So you said that when your brother-in-law was dying, that his stepson Jason came in, and what your brother-in-law said was there's something that there's no difference between them? He said, where I've been, the differences between us,

[55:22]

and there were big differences, mean nothing. And then you said, there's something there. I want to know what you meant when you said there's something there, because there's several different places I could have gone with that. It may have been a little confusing. It was mainly an expression of my feeling that this was a this was a real exchange. It meant it was tremendously meaningful for the stepson. And it was a genuine expression of where my brother-in-law was, where he was. And where do you think he was at that time? I take it the way I understand it, and the way I take this story, because I wasn't there, but other people I know were there, is that

[56:25]

he came fully conscious for and able to in some sense, he would have been able to report where he came from with some clarity. He was really clear about how his relationship had changed with his son-in-law. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, looks like we have two more people with their hands raised. Looks like Stephanie Solar is up next. Good morning, Peter. Hi, Stephanie. I really enjoyed your talk. Oh, thank you. I wanted to share an experience I had with my closest friend

[57:28]

who died November 17th. My husband and I had gone to visit her, and she was virtually unconscious, but still breathing. We spent some time with her, and when we were about ready to leave, we turned around, and she was completely awake. It was really shocking for both of us. We sat down with her. It's hard for me to talk about it because I'm so busy. Thank you. I saw that after 39 years of life that she looked the most beautiful I had ever seen her. It was like I could actually see through her. I could see through the eyes. It was really a remarkable experience. I had something similar when my father died when I was a very young woman, but

[58:29]

this was really powerful. I wondered as I was sitting with her whether she had actually come to terms within herself that she was going to die and that she showed up as, in a way, so different than I had actually known her when she wasn't. She was very concerned about her appearance. A very wealthy person had made a lot of money. Her life was all about, it appeared, all about what was outside. I did go back and visit her a week later and there was nothing. She was still alive, but that was pretty much the end. I guess the question that I have, I'm sorry I'm going on a little bit today. Penelope made a

[59:33]

comment about when she is sitting with death there is something else that appears. There's a continuation. My question is through holding on to life at the moment of death, will there not be that next opening? I'm sorry, my husband's phone is ringing. I wonder about if we're always holding on to life, will we be able to actually experience death at that moment? Will our life be only about holding on for the entire time and then at the moment of death we recognize what it is? I thought, you know, I don't really want to live my life like that, but I also don't know how to sit with death either. How do I work with this? It's hard.

[60:35]

It is. You have to examine your choices. Moment to moment. Just to say quickly, what you have shared with us about your friend was that it reminded me of sitting with my newborn grandson and how stunned I was at the presence of a being who made no attempt to do anything. Maybe there's something connected, something in death, something comes forward in that way. That's what happened with my friend. Again, we'll never know. Sure. I hadn't thought about sharing my experience about my friend

[61:37]

until I just sat down here. I thought, what a wonderful opportunity to share this experience that was so powerful and I believe possible to have again. Thank you. Thank you for your talk. Our final question this morning comes from Rondi. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Peter. Hi. Peter, I want to ask you something. I hope it's not too intimate, but there was a moment yesterday at the cremation ceremony and I noticed that you stayed behind while Sojin's casket was disappearing into the crucible and I wondered if you might share what was happening for you at that time. Not only did you stay behind,

[62:40]

but you bowed and I don't know what else took place, but I wondered if you might share, again, if it's not too personal. Okay. I was wanting to express something to Sojin one to one. That's what I felt I wanted and I didn't know how to do that in any way other than what I did in that moment just because the opportunity arose and something had occurred to me just as we were leaving and I also recognized that after I left the event, I was out on the street, I just really really needed some time by myself. I didn't know what else to do except to take some time, which I did. Well, I'm glad you did. It was a powerful

[63:42]

ceremony and it's a very powerful space. I've been there for another cremation ceremony and it's very powerful. Thank you for your ritual and for your farewell. It was poignant to see his casket disappearing into the crucible. Very, very final. I don't know if it's final, but it's final enough. Well, that part of it. Yes, right. Sure. Thank you. Thank you.

[64:30]

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