Good morning. Can you hear me? Great. Can you hear me in the room in Lincoln Square? Yes. Great. So I want to continue my series of talks on the Paramitas are liberative practices. I talked about generosity last Sunday. Today I want to talk about patience and healing and the special opportunity I've had this week to practice those. For some of you, this is a review. I've talked about the Paramitas and especially about patience often, that ancient dragon, but some of you are newer. So I want to go over the 10 Paramitas, the 10 liberative practices, the 10 practices that we engage in that express our liberation. These are generosity,

[01:02]

ethical conduct, patience, energy or enthusiasm, samadhi or meditation, and prajna or insight, sometimes translated as wisdom, and also skillful means, vow, powers, and knowledge, which is different from wisdom. So these are all expressions of our bodhisattva vow to relieve suffering and liberate beings and expressions of our liberation right now here. So today I want to talk about patience and healing. So patience is an active practice. It's not passive. Patience is something we actually act on or with. It involves attention, paying attention, giving our attention, expressing our attention while we're sitting zazen, while we're waiting for various things, just to pay attention.

[02:19]

And then part of patience is that when we're paying attention, when we're waiting, we may see an opportunity to respond actively. So this has to do with skillful means. All 10 of these practices are totally connected and inform each other. But this traditionally, this practice of patience, kshanti in Sanskrit, also has been talked about as tolerance How do we tolerate pain? How do we tolerate the difficulties of the world? Also forbearance. How do we receive these opportunities for practicing patience? So this is a very dynamic practice to practice.

[03:21]

It's a Bodhisattva practice, a liberative practice. It helps each of us when we practice patience, it helps everyone to see liberation, feel liberation, realize liberation. And the world gives us many opportunities to practice patience. Have you noticed many things in the world allow us, provide us wonderful opportunities to do this wonderful practice of patience. And so I had a special and have a special opportunity this week. Tuesday evening, I was in the emergency room for five hours. which required lots of patience, lots of waiting. Some of you may have had this experience.

[04:25]

What happened is late Tuesday afternoon, it was raining and it was sort of freezing rain. And I was walking our puppy, who's in the hospital. very energetic. She's very active and speedy and strong. She's small, but she's very strong. Anyway, at some point, I slipped and fell flat on my face on the sidewalk. So you can see some of the marks of that. No serious injuries to my head, no injuries to my head, just black eyes, two black eyes, this eye is black underneath the black eye patch. So yeah, patience has to do with healing also. So it required patients to wait in the emergency room and then to wait for various examinations and procedures

[05:33]

and still having to practice patience with healing. So I wanna talk about healing today too. This is a part of patience. And again, the world provides each of us and all of us together many opportunities to practice healing, to be patients and practice patience. So what is that like? How do we practice patience together? So partly this is a practice that our Sangha has been involved with and is still involved with. And this is a practice that all of us, the whole world has been involved with through this pandemic. And I just want to say that this is, we have a very talented sangha.

[06:36]

One of our sangha members was a longtime emergency room physician, so I want to thank Dale. He's retired, but he actually helped me to know which hospital to go to that would take less time. So I might've spent 10 hours in the emergency room without Dale's help. Anyway, how do we, you know, practice just waiting? There's many opportunities. Waiting for the bell to ring during SARS when we're having a, and uncomfortable rather than a joyful period of Zazen. Waiting for all kinds of things, waiting for opportunities, waiting for the bus, waiting at a red light for the light to turn, waiting. All of our life, we have to practice this patience.

[07:45]

Of course, we learn about practicing patience through our impatience. So studying patience, studying the self of patience is about seeing when we do get impatient, when we get upset and we get angry. And one of our precepts is to not hold onto anger, to not be angry, to let go of that. But that's, it's not that we crush anger or impatience, we study it. This is how we learn patience. So now I'm practicing patience waiting for these scars to heal and my arms in a sling because of my thumbs in a splint and have to have waiting to find out if there's any there was no. no break in the thumb from x-rays, but they need to check it further.

[08:52]

So, you know, all of us have sometimes less dramatic times to practice and opportunities to practice patients. The ultimate practice of patience, kshanti in Sanskrit, is anutpadaka dharma kshanti. I love saying that, it's my favorite Sanskrit term. It means the practice of realizing the ungraspability of things, of any dharma, of anything. So, The practice of patience is not to get rid of impatience. It's to see our impatience and to, settle into our impatience. This is true of, I'll be talking sometime in the next month about ethical conduct and precepts and all of this is related.

[10:02]

All of these practices are related, but basically it's not about crushing delusion or getting rid of delusion. It's about seeing it because delusion is just the other side of awakening. They come together. So not to get rid of difficulties, but to be present and patient with all our difficulties. So somehow, thinking about this and thinking about talking about this, I am going to do some rock dharma. So there's a few songs that I want to cite about patience. One of them is Tom Petty's, the waiting is the hardest part. So some of you know this, but the refrain is you take it on faith.

[11:07]

You take it to the heart. The waiting is the hardest part. So, um, just waiting in the emergency room. They had seen me initially and then there were all these tests that had to be done. And it took a long time for me to be taken back to a room and then waiting more for the doctor to come in and the various people to come in. This happens in all these situations with patients. How do we find How do we take it to our heart? This is the practice of zazen. How do we just be present in the middle of difficulty, in the middle of something that we don't like? It wasn't that I was happy that I fell, but it was a wonderful opportunity.

[12:13]

I'm grateful to have opportunities to practice patience. So there's three songs I want to cite. The next one is a song that Rod Stewart sings. He sings, hard times are only the other side of good times. But if you ever wished hard times were gone, don't it seem like a long time? seemed like a long time, seemed like a long, long time. When we're impatient, when we're waiting, it seems like a long time. And we're all practicing patience. We're already practicing patience. And we see it through our impatience. The song also says, wartime is only the other side of peacetime.

[13:15]

But if you've ever seen how wars are won, you know what it's like to wish peacetime on Congress. Seems like a long time. Seems like a long, long time. So actually what set me off thinking about these songs was another song that is about the depths of patience. You know, these external scars will heal. Didn't break any bones, fortunately. But I was thinking, about a song by John Lennon. One thing you can't hide is when you're crippled inside.

[14:29]

This is about Zazen. This is about our sustained Zazen practice. Then it was funny. You can shine your shoes and wear a suit. You can comb your hair and look quite cute. You can hide your face behind a smile. One thing you can't hide is when you're crippled inside. And Ehedo Genzenji, the founder of our practice tradition in Japan in the 13th century said, nothing is hidden. Nothing in the world is ever hidden. So, you know, the external scars, they heal, but all of us, all of us, all of us, I know I have to be patient with all these different pieces of paper, here we are.

[15:36]

Yeah, all of us are crippled inside in some way or other. It's part of what it means to be human. And there are people who think they can hide what's crippled inside. What's difficult about Zazen is not getting your legs into some funny position or sitting still for 30 or 40 minutes. But sustained Zazen practice, we start to see how we're crippled inside. So, you know, the point of Zazen is to just show up, to show up on your seat, to show up in your body,

[16:44]

in your heart to keep inhaling and exhaling. And if we do this practice for a while, we can't hide from what's crippled inside. We chant all our ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow. We will chant that at the beginning of service. after the talk. And this is very deep. And it's not that we want to get rid of our difficult karma. It's that we see it fully. The practice of ethical conduct, which I'll talk about sometime in the next month in more detail, but it's not about crushing our delusion. escaping from our delusion.

[17:48]

How do we be patient with the reality of this body-mind and the ways that we are each crippled inside? This is like the first noble truth that there is suffering in the world. And the first noble truth is noble because we can sit upright and sit with it and be with it. It's not about getting rid of. Well, of course, we vow to relieve the suffering of all beings, but that means really for us to see the suffering of all beings and for all beings to see their suffering. How do we practice patiently? with all the ways we're crippled inside. So there are people in the world, sadly, who think they can hide all the ways they're crippled inside.

[18:56]

Maybe they don't even know that they're crippled inside. Some people think, hey, I'm fine, everything's cool. But when we do this practice, we start to see our ancient twisted karma, how family dynamics helps us to be crippled inside. We can just see this, we can be patient with it and not try and run away from it. Running away from delusion is delusion. So one of the things that happens is in zazen, when we practice for a while, when we continue sitting regularly, we see how we are crippled, each of us in our own body, mind, but all of us together also, of course, how the world is crippled.

[20:08]

And trying to run away from that, trying to escape from our lives is not the practice. It's just witnessing patiently. Here we are. So I feel fortunate to have these, um, scars, but just so I can see the outside, but also we all have these scars inside. How do we confess these scars? How do we acknowledge all our ancient twisted karma? It's not hidden, actually. As John Lennon says, and Stogan said, So, just to say one of the things that I most treasure about my teacher, Tenchimura Anderson, was his amazing patience with my crippledness and with other people's crippledness and his own.

[21:29]

So I learned about patience from my teacher. And I'm very grateful. And so this week, especially, I can give thanks. This week is Thanksgiving, one of our great American Buddhist holidays. The practice of generosity coming from the practice of gratitude. And we'd be grateful for our injuries that help us to see beyond to see liberation right in the middle of our difficulties. So giving is one of the, is, well, I spoke about it last Sunday. That's the practice of dana or generosity.

[22:31]

How do we be generous with our own injuries? How do we be generous with our own pain? How do we be generous with others, with their pain? So one of our practices, one of the precepts is not to speak of the faults of others. How can we be generous and grateful for the difficulties of others and ourselves. These two, this American holiday, this American Buddhist holiday brings together gratitude, thankfulness, and generosity. When we are grateful, we naturally want to share that. How do we share kindness?

[23:37]

How do we share acceptance? Acceptance of the ungraspability of anything. We think we can control the world, but then, you know, we're out for a walk and suddenly fall flat on our face. So things happen. Difficult things happen. So our whole Sangha has been practicing patience in a lovely way through difficulties. And our whole world has been practicing patience with the COVID pandemic. It's not over. I know of several people who've had COVID recently. I did a few months ago, a couple times.

[24:38]

So our Sangha has had to learn how to practice with being crippled. It's a great teaching. So actually, people in our Sangha, a group of us have been actively searching for a new building to purchase for a long-term Ancient Dragon Zen Gate Temple in Chicago. So we haven't talked about this in a while, but I thought I'd mention it. It's complicated finding a building that works in terms of all the temple functions, finding a building that is a good building. So I've been looking at buildings with Ed Donnelly, who's one of our song members, who's an architect and contractor and former realtor.

[25:43]

And we've been working with some current realtors and looking for spaces. So that's happening just to let you all know. But part of it is also the financial part. So we saw a building that was really cool that we liked on Western Avenue. And but we weren't ready to act on it. So we're trying to work on that side of it too. It's all very complicated. It takes patience to work through all of the difficulties, all of the different facets of how to eventually have a full-time, long-term Ancient Dragon Zen Gates, Tsuki Roshi lineage temple in Chicago. And we've also been working recently on locations and refining our idea of locations. So we wanna be within a half a mile of a brown line or red line stop in Northern Chicago. So we've narrowed down areas.

[26:44]

All of this is, you know, it requires patience. But in the meantime, thanks to the generosity of Hogetsu, We are in this wonderful first floor of a building in Lincoln Square and have a really lovely interim Zendo. This past year, we've been at Ebenezer Lutheran Church, and I'm grateful for that opportunity to practice in person together, but it was awkward in lots of ways. Now we have a Doak Sun room and practice discussion room in our new Lincoln Square Zendo, temporary Lincoln Square Zendo. And there's a kitchen and a kitchen upstairs. And so it's, so for those of you who have not been in person, who are in Chicago, who would like to come to sit with others, it's a wonderful situation, but it's temporary.

[27:52]

It's interim and we're looking for something longer term. So this is all about the practice of patience. How do we be patient with all the things that are involved in finding our space to practice patience together? And then I've been trying to find a way to practice patience with the awkwardness of our current hybrid system. So I can see all the people on Zoom. I can see silhouettes of all the people in our Lincoln Square Zendo. So we are going to work more on how to develop that. And that's gonna require a lot more patience, but we're all gonna be working on that. So, Some of you may feel like it's awkward to come to Ancient Dragons Zen Gate.

[29:01]

Many people who came when we were just on Zoom, we haven't seen in a while. Many of the people who were at our wonderful storefront temple on Irving Park, that some of you remember, some of them we haven't seen in a while. So we're rebuilding. And so that requires patience. And it's not about, you know, that there's something wrong with this. It's not about fixing this. It's about enjoying this and the unfolding of this. So it's great just to see the faces of the people on Zoom or the people whose faces are available on Zoom and to see the bodies in the Lincoln Square Zendo. And I hope you can see some of us on Zoom in the Zen Dojo. Anyway, patience is a wonderful practice.

[30:05]

So the whole world now needs to practice patience. We need to practice patience with how can we respond to the wars? in the Ukraine and elsewhere, how do we practice patience with climate breakdown, which is apparent everywhere in the world and causing mass migrations and famine in some places in the world and big floods in other places in the world. And so this is urgent, but we also have to be patient about how we can, work to change from, and how the systems of the world can work to change from fossil fuel to renewable energy. It's available technologically.

[31:06]

Anyway, all of this requires patience. How do we be patient with all the difficulties in our world? all the difficulties in our sangha, all the difficulties in our own lives. And we practice patience by just sitting upright and inhaling and exhaling and enjoying our inhale and exhale and paying attention so that when there's something we can do that's helpful, we might try and do it. not to hide from any of it, not to hide from our own ancient twisted karma and our world's ancient twisted karma and all the suffering out there in the world.

[32:12]

How can we all encourage each other and all others to practice active patience, readiness, attentiveness, being ready to respond when we can be helpful. And sometimes all we can do is just rest and let our scars heal. So this practice of patience, and I'm relating it to the practice of healing, because part of our practice is to heal the world. not to fix it, but just to allow healing, which happens naturally, can happen naturally, is already happening. It may not seem like healing is happening in our world because we all know all the difficulties, but there's change.

[33:14]

And all this requires patience and attention and caring. So thank you all for your patience, listening to my babbling, listening to my efforts to speak of patience. As a patient in the emergency room this week, So I'll stop now except just to give another shout out to Thanksgiving. This week is our Buddhist holiday of Thanksgiving. So to appreciate all the things which we have to be grateful for and in that appreciation to share and give and express generosity. So any comments or questions or responses to any of this or stories of patients or whatever, please feel free.

[34:35]

I can see that, well, maybe Ruben, you can help me call on people in Zoom if I can't see them and also people in the room there in Lincoln Square. So glad you're all here. so glad we are all here. Do we have a question or comment? Yes. Who is this? My name is Michael. Hi, Michael. Yeah, so I'll try to be brief. Following the Waukegan Cemetery attack, I experienced personal anti-Semitic insults directed at me, which I responded to by yelling at this person. And then I sat. And Zazen, sitting with the anger, when I couldn't sleep, I couldn't read, couldn't do anything, but Zazen was what I could do to sit with my hatred for this specific person's ignorance and for

[35:49]

the antisemitism and the bigotry in general. My question, what I want to know and figure out is how we can be patient with that sort of thing without simply ignoring it, without allowing it to continue and giving people ignorance. We know what happens when we simply brush it under the rug. So how can we exercise patient with ignorant hurting people who are hurting others and yet still act skillful? Thank you. Great question. There's a lot to say. I think the first thing is to be patient and forgive yourself for your anger. That does not mean not paying attention to difficulties and challenges and abuse in the world.

[37:02]

It doesn't mean just, you know, accepting all of that. But how do we encourage people to not hate? It doesn't come from hatred. This is really difficult. Thank you. This is the question. So we don't ignore difficulties in the world. And how do we respond to call attention to hatred in the world, but without succumbing to our own hatred and anger? Anger arises, that's natural. One commentary on the precept of not harboring ill will is how we say it, not being angry. One commentary says that when there's a situation that allows anger, not to be outraged is a violation of the precepts.

[38:13]

So anger arises, but holding onto anger does not help. So please forgive yourself for being angry. but keep paying attention. How do we help others to see that they may be causing harm? How do we respond peacefully from kindness, from patience with our own response? So I know about this. Many of you know, I was raised Jewish. So that's my ethnicity to put it that way. I'm practicing Buddhist and a Buddhist teacher, but I respect my heritage. And actually my last name is a product of antisemitism. So that's a whole other story. So I know about that and it's spreading in the world.

[39:15]

And there's also hatred of others is the basic problem. whether it's hatred of Jews or hatred of black people or hatred of Muslims or hatred of Asian people or indigenous people. Our whole world is split up by seeing this separation of self and others. This is the basic delusion. How do we heal this? So we need to pay attention to it. And we need to see how we do it too, that we see others as separate from ourselves. whether it's other groups or just other humans or other species. How do we stop hating animals we don't like? Or how do we see that actually there is no, in truth, in suchness, there's no separation. There's no separation.

[40:16]

We're connected. We are involved with those who are expressing hatred for other groups, because we see that we separate ourselves too. How do we heal that? How do we be patient with that? So I see somebody here who lives on the South side of Chicago, and I live just North of the border of Chicago. So North and South, we can think of those as separate people. We had a whole civil war in this country. Seeing that separation, believing that separation. Actually, we're all connected. This is difficult, this is really challenging. There's harm that is being done in the name of separation, in the name of this delusion that self and other are separate. So how do we heal that in ourselves? How do we heal that in our world? How do we see that we are all together in this?

[41:17]

It's difficult and requires a lot of patience. And Zazen helps, just sitting, just being present, enjoying our inhale and exhale. We see this separation we've imagined between self and other. Michael, do you have any follow-ups on that? My follow-up is this is an individual I have to continue to interact with, so that is very helpful. Yeah, so this person is teaching you patience. I don't know if any of you ever read Don Juan back in the old days, the Carlos Castaneda books. And what's the term he uses for people who, give you a hard time.

[42:23]

Oh, I think he says petty tyrants, something like that. And, you know, these people help us to learn patience. So how can you be kind to this person rather than yelling at them, but also be kind to yourself in your own pain about it? So that person is giving you a wonderful opportunity to practice patience. And it's not easy. If it was easy, then you wouldn't need to practice patience. It doesn't mean ignoring harmfulness. It doesn't mean ignoring hate or anger or confusion or this sense of separation, but how can you, approach it from this place of sunset.

[43:25]

So good luck with it. Thank you. Other comments, responses, questions, please. Jeff. Jan, I can't hear you. I know. I had to. Okay. Hi. Hello. Hi. I wrote down enough from your talk to give a whole talk of my own. You said so much that really was moving and important. My background is really mixed. I grew up out West and in California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah.

[44:30]

And mostly from the time I was 11 until I was 21, and that's an important 10 years, I lived in Salt Lake City. And during that time, I came from being a super good Mormon to being an apostate from the Mormon Church. And my sister, who was only four years older than me, went the other way. And she has, at this point, at least 40 offspring and they just keep multiplying. I mean, she had seven children of her own and five of them had five children and those 25 grandchildren are just prolific as they were.

[45:35]

When my sister died, she was surrounded by a loving family. She was calm. And she was not unhappy. I went to visit her two weeks before she died because I knew it would be the last time I would see her. And, um, It was very, to me as I look back on it, it was an extremely difficult visit because she and I were not close and it was, I feel like it was me against these 40 people who were mostly devout and I look upon this life of my sister where she worked her tail off for the church, and she was happy in doing that, as opposed to my life where I've been a protester and an agitator and mostly very impatient with people who disagreed with me, et cetera, et cetera.

[47:15]

Um, I have to say it was good for her. At least it seems to me right now that it was good for her. I don't know whether her life after death was as ideal as he might've pictured it. I don't really care what, but this has been. a test of patience for me, I think, my whole life. And that was just one of the things I wrote down from this talk. I just want to mention one teeny tiny thing, and I'll really stop. I was at Green Gulch when Reb Anderson gave a talk. And he must have spent at least five minutes. And of course, time can travel slowly when you're watching somebody else. just arranging his robes, so he would be comfortable to give the Dharma talk.

[48:20]

It took forever. And it, I still look back on that and think he sat down, he sat down in this endo. And then we waited and waited and waited for him to keep arranging and rearranging his robes. So And I've noticed that when Tiger is talking, I'm just laughing all the time about things that he says, and I'm the only one that sees that thinks they're so funny. I don't know why that is. Anyway, I really have to stop or I would just go on forever. So thank you so much, Tiger. I really love your Dharma talks. No kidding. Thank you. Yeah, my teacher is not only is very patient, but he provides opportunities for other people to be patient.

[49:26]

Yeah, and actually getting settled on one seat during Zazen is a whole practice. to really find your seat and get settled. So I appreciate your story about your sister and your differences. And even though you left that practice, I heard that you appreciate that it was good for her in some ways. And So how do we see, so this split, this separation, this break between self and others, how can we imagine how others feel? How can we imagine how others feel about us and about other things, other separations?

[50:34]

So really, you and your sister were never separated. It felt like it for both of you maybe. And we can criticize other, we might feel criticism for other spiritual traditions, but actually we're all connected. And that's hard to see. It's hard to see how Democrats and Republicans today are connected. but nothing can happen without all of us. This is really difficult. Seeing this requires a lot of patience and being kind and imagining how other people feel. So anyway, thank you for your example, Chad. Other comments, responses, questions from anybody in Lincoln Square or from anybody on Zoom, please feel free.

[51:45]

We've got two. Hi, and I'm sorry that you had this fall, but I'm happy to hear the result of it. which is this lovely Dharma talk. Things that came up for me around patience has to do with our practice of sewing. And I remember very much learning so much from Blanche Hartman, who has amazing patience. But, you know, I would go and go, can I take this stitch out? It's not perfect enough, you know. Twistedness, my lack of attention. And she said, Oh, we can do that. But you know, remember, you can't redo your life. And this is that practice of nothing is hidden. And, you know, I feel like, with ancient dragon, we're, we're enveloped in this kind of deep practice of patience, even today, like figuring out how are we going to move this to see you?

[52:59]

You know, how are we going to figure things out for him. And so I feel this is always available to us, that we're always seeing, you know, this, both the twisted nature, but also the beauty, you know, Buddha's robe is just this continual repetition of taking refuge. So I guess I just feel like there's a lot in your talk that's so deep. So thank you very much for it. Thank you so much, Hôketsu, for so many things. Hôketsu has been our sewing teacher at Ancient Dragons Zen Gate, and some of you have rôkusus, and the first stitches that are sewed are the ones that are like right front and center. I've sewed about five rôkusus, I think, and one sees the bad stitches right in the middle first off. So it's not about being perfect. It's not about getting everything correct. It's not about getting rid of that which is incorrect.

[54:01]

It's not about exterminating Mormons or Jews or Muslims or whatever. How do we see each other? How do we see each other? How do we see that we're not separate? And how do we, nothing is hidden. So, you know, this John Lennon song I think is very deep. One thing you can't hide is when you're crippled inside. And we try and hide it, you know, that's, we grow up, you know, developing an ego, growing up, going through adolescence, we try and hide all those, all that stuff that's yucky, you know, and sustains us and practice just opens it all up. And it's hard. And it's not about fixing it. It's about, okay, this is part of what is, and what is, is home. And how do I accept it all?

[55:03]

How do I wear this rock suit even though there's crummy stitches in it? So thank you, Hoketsu. Other comments, questions, responses, please feel free. Ko? Yeah, I was struck by, you're talking about patients as an active practice. We think of it as a passive thing that just we hold back, but, and then when I, the question about the antisemitic remarks and the rising of anger, and I was, wondering if anger can be a trigger for patience and what steps you might take from anger to patience. And my petty tyrant here says hello. Hi, Amaya. So, yeah. Gosh. Yeah, so anger comes up, we see things we don't like, we see suffering, we see harm.

[56:13]

It's not about ignoring any of that. So when we see it, how do we just, okay, how am I part of that? Blaming others, finding faults with others is not helpful. You know, there's so much name calling in our society today. It doesn't mean we shouldn't call out acts of hatred or acts of harm. We should acknowledge that and maybe people have to be held accountable when they are doing that, but it's not about blaming people or finding fault with people. It's about looking at the activity, looking at the actual events and how, and being patient with that and responding. Patience is not passive. We think it is.

[57:14]

We think that our practice is just sitting, you know, and people can, you know, use, you know, Zazen and other spiritual practices as spiritual bypass to ignore the ways they're crippled inside or the way that our world is crippled inside. But the true practice of patience is patience with the ungraspability, patience with the the reality that we can't fix things. We can see them and help them develop and help them see that inside, everything is already whole. This is difficult. This is challenging, but we don't hold back from responding when there is some way to respond. And there may be many different ways to respond. And each of us has our own way to respond.

[58:17]

So I have responded to social injustice by going to demonstrations and I may do so again. But it's not about, you know, name calling to some other person or group. It's about seeing the harm that's happening. And how do we respond to that and encourage healing? So I was going to practice patience. I was going to talk about patience today before my accident. And through my accident, I came to see that patience and healing are totally connected, that we heal through seeing how we're all connected, seeing how all of the ways, you know, our human intellect, our discrimination naturally separates self and others or this and that. And it's not that we stop discriminating, but how do we accept the reality of discrimination and help to heal it and help to make whole that we're all involved in the whole thing.

[59:35]

And the whole thing is involved with each of us. I don't know if I responded to your question. Anger comes up and you know, we can transform anger and the transformed quality of anger is seeing what's going on that allowed us to have our anger. Raging against the machine. Well, you know, that might, that might be helpful sometimes, but not to rage against some other being who is caught by the machine. Cause we all are. So there's another rock reference for you. But it's all, we're all together in this. That's the reality. And yet there's so much division and we see that and we see discrimination. So when anger arises in us, we can transform that into seeing clearly what's going on and then seeing how to respond.

[60:39]

And skillful means is the art of how do we, that's another one of these liberative practices, these paramitas, which I'll hope to get to sometime in the next month or two. But how do we transform this opportunity of anger arising into seeing clearly what's, what's going on and seeing some way to respond. And it's trial and error. Skillful means is not some manual or instruction manual about how to be skillful. It's about, about the expression of patients, about patients, and then how do we respond? So anyway, anger can be transformed. and greed and confusion can be transformed wholesomely. Thank you, Ko. We have another voice in the Zundo. Good. Thanks. Hello.

[61:43]

Who is this, please? No, sorry. This is Paul. Hi. You probably can't see me, but can you hear me okay? I can hear you just fine. Okay, great. Um, what is coming up for me is I'm thinking about how, uh, when conflict arises, it can be tempting to, uh, stay like air on the side of being passive and kind of think to myself like, Oh, I'm just being patient. Um, and so I'm trying to kind of further grasp, like what patience And I'm thinking this like quote came up. I can't remember who said it. It says some cinematographer said like, tyranny is the deliberate repression of nuance. Of what? Tyranny is the deliberate repression of nuance.

[62:44]

Nuance. What came into my head was like, patience is the embrace of nuance. Good. Yeah, does that kind of sound true to you? And like, maybe you can speak to that sort of like passivity versus patience. Yeah, thank you so much for that. Yes, the world is nuanced and conflicts do arise. And, you know, confessing and repenting of my own ancient twisted karma, I tend to be conflict averse. Um, I think I get it from my father anyway. Um, but it's also mine and I like to, you know, I, I try to avoid conflict. Some people really like it, like to get in there and, you know, take a position or whatever.

[63:48]

Um, but you know, um, Passivity isn't just avoiding conflict, isn't just avoiding our crippledness, isn't just avoiding the pain of the world. That's not patience, that's ignorance. So patience is to really study our situation and the situation of the world and the situation of everybody together. and then to respond when we can. And sometimes the best response is just to sit still, but that's not the same as avoidance. We have to really study and watch. You know, Dogen says to study the way is to study the self. This means to study this illusion of separation of self and others. So how do we be patient with our impatience?

[64:56]

It's not just, you know, checking out or passivity. That doesn't, that's not helpful. And that's not what this is about. Patience is paying attention, but not feeling like you have to go out and do something. You know, a lot of people think they have to fix things, you know, but you know, the old Zen slogan, just don't just do something, sit there. Sometimes we have to just be present and pay attention. And then out of that attention, sometimes we say, oh, I could, I could say this. I could do that. And I can try it and it may or may not be helpful. but then you try something else. But it comes from the steadiness, the calmness of seeing something deeper that we see in Sasa. So thank you for your question.

[66:01]

Anybody else over there in Lincoln Square have something to express? Hello, Eve. When Michael was talking about the Joaquin Cemetery incident, so what came up for me was, related to what you just said, was, I guess, scholarly inquiry as a form of patience? Yes. Because what I wondered is, so the ADL said that there's been a 400% incidence in anti-Semitic incidence since 400% increase since 2016. And so I wonder why that is. And I think it does take a while to figure it out. So maybe is there like also a connection between curiosity and patience?

[67:12]

Yes. And yeah, I mean, we might, you know, the 2016, there was an election. That has something to do with it. But it still takes a while to kind of figure out what, anyway, you know. But it wasn't that one incident, though, of that, you know, of that person or that election. It's something that is, you know, part of our world. this sense of separation and the sense of harm and the sense of hatred coming out of that. But yes, yeah, as a fellow scholar, Eve, yes, paying attention can be expressed in terms of study, in terms of really looking, what's going on here? And to do that rigorously takes time. Yeah. Well, I also realized I'm very impatient with footnotes. I was working on a paper with a student this past weekend.

[68:15]

We had 99 footnotes and the editors made us check over all the footnotes. And yeah, I get impatient. But I mean, I guess it's also practice to be patient with that. And I'm grateful to Zotero which is great software, and it really does help with the footnotes. But, yeah, I do get really impatient with the footnotes. Well, you know, I could use this as an opportunity to see a separation between you and me, Eve, because I really like footnotes. I sometimes go and look at the footnotes first. So, you know, it takes all kinds, and I don't blame you or hate you for not liking footnotes. Also, I wanted to say, Jan, that sometimes I laugh at what you say too, so she's not the only one. Yeah, I think, yeah, laughter, I mean, for me, it comes when you realize something surprising, I guess.

[69:19]

So, you know, what's wonderful about the wholeness of everybody and everything is that there is this nuance, these differences between people. There are Mormons and Muslims and Jews and Protestants and Catholics and Baha'i people. There are people who hate footnotes. There are people who like footnotes. So to see wholeness is to really embrace the whole thing, not to get angry at somebody who sees things differently, but to see how we're connected. That doesn't mean to be passive in the face of harm and harmful acts, but how do we respond in a way that comes from this wholeness? It's a big challenge, requires a lot of patience.

[70:18]

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