Good morning, everyone. Who is here for the first time? A number of people. So I'm Taigen Dan Layton, the founding teacher and guiding Dharma teacher of Ancient Dragons Zen Gate. And I moved here almost 13 years ago. And we occupied this storefront temple almost 11 years ago. And I'm returning today. from a six-month sabbatical since early in March. How many people here started sitting regularly at Ancient Dragon Zen Gate since I was on sabbatical? Great. I look forward to meeting you all. So, I want to thank the board for granting me this sabbatical.

[01:02]

I want to thank everyone, the board and everybody else who helped keep Ancient Dragon Zen Gate going this last six months. This is a wonderful indication of the development and maturity of our Sangha. In the middle of that sabbatical, I came back and we held Dharma transmission ceremonies for our new teachers, Nyozan Eric Hsu and Aisin Nancy Easton. So that's also wonderful to have new teachers here at Ancient Dragon Zen Gate, another sign of our maturity as a Sangha, so I also feel like a new teacher. So I'm really happy to be back. So I'm gonna start by reviewing our basic practice and teachings.

[02:05]

And I would say our basic practice comes down to two points. One, our basic practice is just to sit like Buddha. just to sit upright like Buddha. Do they still say to be woke, to be upright, to be present, to enjoy our inhale and exhale? Just to be present as we sit like Buddha. And for those of you who had meditation, zazen instruction for the first time today, I strongly recommend not only doing this practice when you come here to Ancient Dragon Zen Gate or some other center, and you're welcome to come now anytime for any of our scheduled events, but also at home in your spare time just to sit down, face the wall, and it doesn't matter whether you're sitting cross-legged or kneeling or in a chair, to sit like Buddha, to be present and upright.

[03:24]

And if you do this regularly over time, it's not just to sit like Buddha. It's also to walk like Buddha, as we just did, and even to talk like Buddha, and maybe even to chew gum like Buddha. I don't know if they had gum in India 500 BC. I very rarely chew gum myself, only socially. But anyway, just to be present and upright. And we face the wall. We face ourselves. We face all beings. So that's the first point, just to be present and upright like Buddha. And as we do this, and the more we do this, something happens. And of course, you may well ask, oh, what's Buddha? So please hold on to that question. So that's the first point.

[04:25]

The second point, as Dogen, the founder of our branch of Buddhism, Soto Zen, who lived in the first half of the 1200s in Japan, he said, Buddha goes beyond Buddha. So this is the second point. Our practice is ongoing awakening. Awakening or enlightenment or whatever you want to call it is not the goal of practice. It's the starting point. This awakening is an ongoing process. It's not about reaching some special point of awareness or mental activity or some special beingness. Buddha didn't stop practicing or awakening when she became Buddha.

[05:30]

So this is an ongoing process, a lifelong process of waking up. So what does that mean? So I'm going to talk about that more. Basically, this is about how do we live our lives? How do our lives come alive? What's the point of our lives? And again, Buddha goes beyond Buddha. It's not that we find some answer to that question, and then we can forget about it. How do we live our lives in this situation, in this situation, in this world? So, you know, thinking about coming back to return to ancient dragons, zenge, I really didn't, I worked at not thinking about, not figuring out what I wanted to talk about.

[06:50]

Finally, in the last couple of weeks, things came to me. So I want to talk first about Dogen's basic teachings. Again, Dogen was the early 1200s, first half of the 1200s, great Japanese teacher who put together all of Buddhism before him in a beautiful, expressive way. So I love his teachings. So I'm going to talk about some of his basic teachings next Sunday and during the three-day sitting we have coming up in the middle of the month, his basic teachings about zazen and practice. But also, starting today and tomorrow and then later in the month, I want to talk about the Japanese Buddhist background before Dogen. So I feel that this Japanese background to Dogen is very important to our practice.

[07:54]

It derived from China, but it developed independently in Japan. And it's not talked about much in American Zen. So I'm going to start talking about that today. There were the formal teaching schools, kegon in Japanese, which comes from the huayen or flower ornament sutra teachings. developed in China and continued in Japan. That was one of the schools. So there's not going to be a test on this. You don't have to remember any of this. But I just wanted to share some of this with you. Another main school in Japanese Buddhism before Zen, and these are all important to our practice, Shingon, the two-word school. This is the Japanese Vajrayana or Tantric school. which is actually very important as a background to Soto Zen. And then there was the Tendai school, which is where Dogen came from and all of the great founders of schools like the Pure Land School and Nichiren School in Dogen's period.

[09:07]

And it came from Chinese Tiantai, but it developed in its own way in Japan. And then aside from the formal teachings, I want to particularly talk about the Japanese poetic and aesthetic background. It goes back before Dogen. And it's really an important background to our teaching and our practice. So again, this isn't mentioned much in American Zen, but it's something that I feel is important. We talk a lot about the Chinese Chan or Zen, the Chinese koans and Zen stories that Dogen talks about a lot and that are very important in our teaching and practice. So we talk about that background. But this Japanese background that came from China and developed independently in Japan is something that I think is very important for us. So I want to focus on that.

[10:09]

And again, I'm going to talk about that today and tomorrow evening and then later in the month. So this is important to me personally. When I was 20, I had the chance to spend a few months going around to ancient temples the old capitals of Kyoto and Nara in Japan, and just was amazed by these, you know, the old Buddhist statues and the temples, and somehow absorbed some of this. You know, some of that was the Zen gardens that developed later, but it was also the old Buddhist statues and architecture, and later I studied the poetry and aesthetics, but I kind of absorbed something from that that goes back before Dogen. And so that, so we have statues of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas around this temple and, you know, this goes back before Dogen and is this grounding of our practice.

[11:23]

And it's not Japanese. This isn't a practice about Japanese culture particularly. But I want to talk about those roots as part of, what is part of our sitting practice? And what does that mean for us here in this time and place? How does that inform us? So this isn't about, so four years after, That experience in Kyoto and Nara, I met a Japanese Soto priest in New York City and began regular formal Soto practice. But those roots remained important. So this isn't about history or philosophy or even, but just something about the physical practice and how it's informed by this sensibility. I'm going to be talking about this from a book that I like a lot by William LaFleur, who was a great American Buddhist scholar, taught at the University of Pennsylvania, and a really cool guy.

[12:41]

He taught about Japanese literature and philosophy and Japanese Buddhism. Later on, he taught about This is just a side note, but he taught about Japanese ethics and bioethics and interesting things about how Japanese people see bioethics, for example. This may have changed, but Japanese people, at least a little while ago, didn't believe in transplants. organ transplants because they thought that meant that you were counting on somebody else to die. So it's a different way of looking at things. Anyway, but that was something he went to later. But I want to start by talking about, well, I'll mention four different categories of aspects of Japanese

[13:47]

perspectives that I'm going to talk about. And I don't know how much of that I'll get to today. I'll continue tomorrow and later in the month. But I'll just mention these four. And I want to leave time for discussion at the end of this. So I'll see how far I get. But the first has to do with dreams. And in medieval Japan, Dreams were considered kind of legitimate discourse. Dreams were considered part of reality. And I think this has a lot to say about, well, what is reality? And also about what our zazen is. So I'll talk about that today. The second aspect, just to mention these four, the idea of monastic practice. And here we do non-residential lay practice. But the roots of our practice come from monastic practice.

[14:56]

And even where I was trained at San Francisco Zen Center, I did residential monastic practice at Tassahara Monastery and to some extent at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center. But in medieval Japan, there was this controversy about poetry. and aesthetic and literary production as opposed to monastic practice. And they were considered, you know, there was a question about whether they conflicted. And if you wrote poetry, was that taking away from serious meditation practice? So for us here in doing non-residential practice, maybe it's not so much an issue, but it's interesting the way they thought of it as an issue. So that's the second thing I want to talk about. And I don't know if I'll get to that today. The second is another major issue in medieval Japan was what's called syncretism, combining Buddhism with, at that time, Confucianism and Taoism and Shinto.

[16:00]

So, Confucianism is the Chinese, we could say religion or we could say philosophy, it was just the Chinese way of thinking about the world. There was also Taoism, which is another part of Chinese thinking about the world, Chinese spiritual awareness. And then Shinto refers to the Japanese native awareness of spirits. And Buddhism still, and especially in medieval Japan, had a strong relationship with all three of those. So there was a kind of discussion about the relationship of Buddhism, which came originally from India, to China, then to Japan, and these other forms. Confucianism and Daoism also came from China. Shinto was this really deep native spiritual sense that they had in Japan. So again, there's not going to be a test about any of this.

[17:02]

I just want to kind of talk about this with you, and I do want to leave time for discussion and comments and questions. But it's relevant to us because Zen and Buddhism and all the different forms of Buddhism that are now being practiced here in America, here at Ancient Dragons Zen Gate, we are having some syncretist dialogue with Western psychology and Christian ethical preconceptions and societal engagement. Those are Western contexts, American contexts that are part of our way, have informed to various degrees our way of practicing Buddhism. And then the fourth aspect. And these were all part of Japanese Buddhism before Dogen is a point I want to make. But they are also part of Dogen.

[18:03]

So I'm going back to some roots, Japanese roots. The fourth is called Hongaku in Japanese. It's fundamental awakening or fundamental enlightenment. This sense of sometimes it has to do with the idea of Buddha nature. And so this has to do with the sense of This quality of Buddha that I was talking about, our practice of just sitting like Buddha, being something that is not something you need to acquire or figure out or discover or invent, it's part of what is happening when you sit like Buddha. It's underneath your cushion. It's around you. It's something that's available. And our practice is this maybe endless sense of realizing how it is already part of us.

[19:05]

So that's the terrain I want to talk about, not all the time maybe, but over the next few months. So I'll start with this thing about dreams. And I want to start with, a great Japanese poet named Saigyo. I've talked about him before here. He lived in the century before Dogen. His dates are 1118 to 1190. And he was a great, he was a monk, Tendai monk. But he traveled around and wrote lots of poems. He wrote a lot of poems about the moon. But other things too. So I'll start with a poem Well, actually, I'll start with a poem and a prose introduction from Saigyo. Well, I'll start with his introduction. At the time that the priest, Jakunen, invited others to contribute to a 100-poem collection, I declined to take part.

[20:15]

And this has to do also with the question about is poetry legitimate for a monk to do. And Saegye was already very much a poet. But then on the road where I was making a pilgrimage to Kumano, which is a sacred place in Japan, I had a dream. In it appeared Tankai, the administrator of Kumano, and the poet Shunze. Tankai said to Shunze, although all things in this world undergo change, the way of poetry extends unaltered even to the last age. I opened my eyes, Saigyo says, and understood. Then I quickly wrote a verse and sent it off to Jakunen. the guy who had invited him to write a poem. This is what I composed there in the heart of the mountains. And I'll read it in Japanese just so you get the sound. Sueno yo no kono nasakenomi kawarazu to mishiyume nakuba yoso ni kakamashi.

[21:28]

And it means, even in an age gone bad, the lyric's way stays straight. Not seeing this in a dream, I'd have been deaf to truth. So he's saying that he realized this in a dream. And the point of this is that... He understood something because of the dream. So dreams were considered not just dreams like, oh, forget about them, but that they were legitimate parts of reality and things that one should listen to and pay attention to. Another poem from Saigyo. And again, I'll give you the Japanese. I don't know if there may be a couple people here for whom the Japanese language is meaningful. Utsutsu osara ni oboe neba yume omo yume to nanika omo wan.

[22:34]

Since the, quote, real world seems to be less than really real, why need I suppose the world of dreams is nothing other than a world of dreams? I'll read that again. Since the real world seems to be less than really real, why need I suppose the world of dreams is nothing other than a world of dreams? So I want to read some of William O'Flor's comments about this. And again, the question is, what is reality? And this is related to the question of, what is Buddha? So I'm going to read a number of things that William O'Flor says about this. Sagyo's assumption that conversations that take place in dreams cannot be dismissed, but have some very special significance and message that must be accepted by the designer. That's his assumption. It is one of the hallmarks of this era that Mucho Mondo, conversations taking place in dreams, are highly valued and are considered so directly relevant to the problems faced by the dreamer that they require no active interpretation.

[23:47]

They are not cryptic messages that need to be decoded. by someone with expertise in such things, but direct exchanges between dead persons and living ones. The conversation in Saigyo's dream was between Tankai, an old friend of Saigyo's who had died about six years earlier, and the poet and critic Fujiwara Shunze, who was still living. So Saigyo took this dream seriously as a real message from these people. In the opinion of large numbers of Buddhists in this period, Man's capacity for dreaming posed serious questions about the nature of reality, questions that were more philosophical than psychological. Dreams raised questions about the stability and reliability of what we ordinarily regard as reality, of the world we experience when awake. Lefleur also says, the Buddhists made it their business to point out

[24:51]

that it is not a matter of black or white difference between waking consciousness and dream consciousness, but rather of both of them being on a continuum of consciousness. To them, our ordinary juxtaposing of only two types of consciousness, dividing sharply into the categories of reality and dream, was inadequate, itself an illusion. This is really interesting and I think really relevant to how we see and practice zazen. What is reality? Is there some awake that's different from dreaming? So this was part of the a way that medieval Japanese people thought before Dogen. And Dogen was part of this way of thinking.

[25:54]

So I'm going to read more of the floor about this. This was a philosophical move that had a direct effect on the status of both waking and dreaming consciousness, especially in the traditional consideration of the Hoso school. That's the Japanese version of the Yogacara school. which some of you know something about, which goes back to India, but was a school of Buddhism that studied consciousness and studied the different aspects of consciousness and really looked at how the mind worked as a way of trying to understand and how to awaken and what that meant. And one aspect of our meditation practices to really, you know, Dogen says, to study the ways to study the self, to really look at what's going on as we're sitting. So all of you have just sat a period of zazen and seen that, you know, there's, so, well, I won't assume anything, but I imagine that most of you had some thoughts during the period of zazen.

[27:07]

we learn in Zazen that we, the point of Zazen is not to get rid of thoughts. Now maybe, I won't assume again, but maybe some of you had no thoughts at all during that period of Zazen. I don't know. But most of you probably had some thoughts and maybe, you know, maybe you had thoughts that you wish you didn't have. I don't know. Or maybe you enjoyed your thoughts or maybe, you know, you tried to, I don't know. Anyway, part of the, process of Buddhist meditation is to really study what's going on with those. So this is the Yogacara or Hoso school. So going back to what Mothura is saying, especially in the traditional considerations of the Hoso school, one of the continental schools of Buddhist philosophy, which established itself during the Nara period of Japanese history in the 700s, and set the problematic for subsequent centuries including in Zen, the phenomenon of dreams was a subject of close scrutiny.

[28:12]

The reality status of ordinary waking consciousness was radically lowered by placing it on a continuum with dreaming consciousness. This was emphasized through language describing the fact that contrary to our hopes and projections, all the phenomena and relationships we experience in our daily lives are bound to disappear with time. So reality is changing. I mean, maybe there is one super-reality that is, you know, the ultimate reality, but, you know, what's that? So, and of course there's any acquaintance with the prose and poetry of the Heian period, that's the long period before Dogen, reveals that it is replete with references to all things of this world as in reality, as fleeting as a dream. So OK, maybe that's enough of Dogen.

[29:17]

first discussion of this, but the point is, well, what is reality? Are dreams less reality than when we're walking around supposedly awake, walking through Chicago? taking the L, sitting at a desk during work or whatever. What is reality? And I think there are a lot of implications for our sasen, this practice of sitting like Buddha, sitting upright. What does it mean to be woke? What is mindfulness? Is mindfulness only some special mindfulness where there's no dreams? What is the function and use of visions in Zazen, in Buddhism, in awakening?

[30:27]

So, you know, there are different ideas about Zazen. So in Rinzai Zen, which is one of the two main branches of Japanese Zen, there's a kind of preference for a kind of edge-of-the-seat Zazen. Be upright, be present. And people will come around with big sticks and hit you if you nod off a little bit or if you close your eyes. So that's one way of practice, and it may be helpful for many people. In Soto Zen, which is what we do here, it's more of a sense of gentle Sazen, just trusting that if you're sitting and being present and paying attention, But even paying attention, sometimes, especially in longer sittings, and maybe it doesn't happen in a 30 or 40 minute period of zazen, but we're gonna be doing a three day sitting in a couple weeks, and during a day of sitting, interspersed with walking, you may have some periods where you're sleepy, or where you sort of start to nod off.

[31:41]

Was that not good zazen? Well, according to medieval Japanese Buddhists, maybe it's dreamy. Even if you're sitting very upright, some of those thoughts may be like visions. I'm going to talk a little bit about Mioe and Keizan before I stop for question and answer. But they considered those visions that might happen in Zazen, or even daydreaming as you're walking down the street, as part of the continuum of awareness. Again, as in Saigyo's case, some of those dreams or visions had messages that were important for your practice, and they took them seriously, very seriously. So, yeah, this is... So there's not one ultimate Zazen mind.

[32:44]

From our point of view, the whole thing, is us and mine. And how do you be present and upright with that? How is that Buddha's mind? So how do we know reality? I'm going to be talking next Sunday about Dogen's Genjo Koan, where he talks about different perspectives on what is reality. For example, if you're in the middle of Lake Michigan or in the middle of the ocean, you can't see all the details of the shoreline. And he has many other examples. Just to follow up, just one more Saegyo poem, if I may. Well, this is actually a comment by Lathor about this. Saegyo was merely Well, Osaki, in stating that the solution of his dilemma came through a dream in which two important figures had a conversation, referring to the first poem I read, about that very problem, was being neither pretentious nor simple-minded.

[33:51]

He was merely participating in the mental structure of his era in what everyone at the time would have regarded as common sense. the expectations about the world that are implicitly held as true by the vast majority of people in a society, Sagye's trusting the contents of his dream as genuine reality was a way of drawing practical benefit from a long tradition in Asian Buddhism and from fairly sophisticated discussions in contemporary Buddhist circles concerning the relationship of illusion to reality. So at some point in these discussions, I'm going to mention, I'm going to talk more about Mioe, who was a little before Dogen. His dates were 1173 to 1232. He was a monk in both the Kegon, or Huayen school, and the Shingon, or Vajrayana school. So he didn't have to only pick one school.

[34:52]

He's a fascinating figure, by far the most fascinating figure of all the great leaders in Kamakura Buddhism, more than Dogen even, and I'll talk much more about him. But one thing about him is that he had a dream journal for 30 years or 40 years. Modern Jungian psychologists see him as the first really reflective dreamer. But he included in his dream journal visions that he had during meditation. And he would have dreams or visions about various bodhisattvas. And he would act based on them. Another person, Keizan, who's after Dogen, 1264 to 1325, is the fourth. He's three generations after Dogen in our lineage. He's considered the second founder of Soto Zen. But he talked about dreams a lot. He actually used dreams to decide where to build temples.

[35:53]

He used dreams to decide who to ordain among his students. So, and he's one of the founders of our school. So, okay, maybe I'll stop there. Again, I want to talk about these other aspects of, I will be talking about these other aspects of pre-Dōgen Japanese Buddhism, but maybe there's enough stuff about dreams to entice you to some questions or discussions or comments. So responses, comments, questions, please feel free. About anything. Oh, hi, Miriam. Thank you very much. You're welcome. But yesterday, I did not know that it would be today.

[37:30]

Would you say it again? That's wonderful. Thank you, Miriam. You don't happen to have your oboe with you, do you? Good, other comments or other poems or responses, anything? Yes, hi. So you talk about dreams, reality, and you also mentioned you were going to talk about Benjamin Bond next week.

[38:39]

Yes. And I've always been quite confused about the first paragraph. there is delusional realization, I'm just birth and death, and when myriad things are redundant by themselves, there is no delusional realization, et cetera, et cetera. And it just reminds me of that, that I don't really know Yeah, well, it's not that they're exactly the same.

[39:43]

And reality is not the same with reality and dreams are not the same with other dreams. So it's all changing. But why don't you save that question for next week? I hope you can come. I'll try and remember it. I wasn't going to talk about the first paragraph, but you're welcome to ask me about any part of it. There's so much in Genjo Koan. But yeah, Dogen, even his prose writing is very poetic. So he was drawing from this tradition that I'm starting to talk about, and I'll talk about more. So thank you. Yes, Brian. I've been remembering my dreams a lot more than I used to. And what has struck me recently is how creative the mind is. Yeah. Pulling together these what seem like wildly different and separate pieces into some kind of event or narrative.

[40:45]

And how it's an amazing creative process. It's like a brilliant little film or something. And it struck me that when you're talking about dreams, the way you were, that it's about creativity. I mean, the arts. I can go to a really wonderful theater piece or a music piece or something, and it's real. Something happens, and it affects people. And not only individually, but sometimes socially, the arts do. And so it's like the arts and dreams are these creative processes that happen. have just as much effect sometimes as what we call reality in the waking world. But even in the waking world, we're creating reality all the time anyway, right? Sure. But part of the point is that our conventional idea or sense or preconception of reality is so limited

[41:45]

And part of what Zazen does, so bringing it back to Zazen, is that it gives us a chance to open up our sense of reality. And sometimes that's really uncomfortable. That's part of what's uncomfortable about Zazen, is that our ideas about reality are shaken. But if we can just relax into the reality that reality is not the reality we think is reality, we can allow ourselves to be more creative and include dreams and include new possibilities and see, you know, other options for how to respond to our life. And yeah, Art and music and cinema and poetry open that up too.

[42:50]

Yes, Sid. It's an issue. It was interesting for me to hear Saigo's perspective of dreams as a source of information, I guess, about reality. Because for me, in my experience, it's been the opposite. How do you mean? How so? Well, when I wake up, I realize that my mind is so much vaster and more unfamiliar than I could credit for in my waking life, that I actually have no idea what I am. Good. Because in my waking life, you know, there are assumptions upon But when we dream, all bets are off. And so I had a dream a few years ago, and I don't remember the content of it at all, but it left an impact. I remember waking up and writing down, weary from misunderstanding, I'm embarrassed by my arrogance that I knew anything about myself, about you, or the world.

[44:00]

And so to me, this is a good starting point, weary from misunderstanding. Because I think our waking lives are just guided by thinking I know what you are. It seems like a disservice to think I know what you are. And so I think it's fascinating for me to hear about, you know, using dreams to guide decisions for me. It's the opposite. It robs me of what I thought. Well, I want to turn that. I think that It's okay that you have assumptions. Of course, we have to function in the world. So of course we have assumptions about who we are and what the world is, and we might not be able to function when the light turns red, we stop. When the light turns green, we go. So the point of this is not to get rid of conventional reality.

[45:05]

We need to know how to get to our home and what our address is. This isn't about getting rid of conventional reality and all the assumptions about it. It's about opening up something more in addition. So we don't have to get rid of our assumptions. We don't have to get rid of... We might shift some of that. We might open up and expand some of that. But I don't think it means that because there's these other weird, strange, dreamy realities or things that, you know, so this is again very relevant to Zazen. Because we see something about ourselves, this is part of what's difficult for some people about Zazen because you see something that's uncomfortable. Part of Zazen, what's difficult about Zazen is not getting your legs into some funny position.

[46:08]

It's about seeing, going beyond our comfort zones, seeing something about ourselves or the world that's really uncomfortable. So actually, I didn't finish the talk, I realized. I was going to add something else. So I'm going to do that now and then maybe close. But that's an important point. So I really appreciate. OK. Yeah, so to open up beyond, to know that you don't, that, to not believe everything you think. But that doesn't mean to get rid of your thinking. So some people think that they should get rid of their thinking, and that's the point of Zen. And there's this school of lobotomy Zen that I really think is not helpful. It's not about getting rid of the things that you think.

[47:09]

It's about opening up to having a wider perspective on it and adding things. So to know what your preconceptions are. And then you can say, yeah, I do believe that. I do believe Taigen is so-and-so, or whatever. And then you can add something to that. But I wanted to say, after talking about the dreams and everything, that what all this means today is what's important. What does all this mean in the world we're in, where we're facing mass extinction of many species, a mid-climate breakdown that's happening all around us, where our government detains refugees from terrorist states and from climate damage and puts children in concentration camps on the border, How do we each use our practice lives, not as an escape from the world, but to face our world? So including dreams and including visions from Zazen in our awareness doesn't mean to run away from the conventional realities, the hard realities of our world and of our own lives.

[48:25]

So this is not about an escape. This is about, again, as I said before, how do we live our lives? And opening up, noticing what we think is happening in the world, what we think is happening in our lives, facing that. We face the wall not as a way of keeping stuff out. How do we face the world to face ourselves and to face everything in the world? How do we face the wall and just to face ourselves, to face everything that comes up in our zazen and in our thoughts and in dreams, but not to keep anything out, but to include everything? How do we sit with that? How do we face that? How do we be present with that?

[49:28]

How do we respond to that? And there's not one right way to respond to that. Going back to Miriam's poem, how we will respond to that today is not what we thought it was yesterday, and vice versa. So being more aware of what we think we are and how we think we are means opening up to wider perspectives. And so the point of all this is I want to talk about all this in terms of this sense of things that is in part of the mindset that goes back before Dogen. So Ayshan, last comment. Science.

[50:48]

So thinking about this as you're talking about... Yeah, so going back to Sudesh's question, yes, to acknowledge the limitations of what we think, and what we think is always an illusion.

[52:37]

It's a limited perspective on reality, but we don't get rid of that, but we can open up to other dreams and visions and possibilities, and listen. But going back to Buddha's last words, I love Mary Oliver's turning of that, which is not just to be a lamp unto yourself, but part of this is to be a lamp for all beings. So how do we do that without, and as you said, to settle and be calm and as Chateau said in Song on the Grass Hut, let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. So part of, I didn't include that in, you know, this is part of the, so just sitting like Buddha includes letting go, relaxing completely, to allow the dreams and visions and multiplicity of awareness to inform our preconceptions and be included. So there's a lot, and we'll keep talking about this.

[53:43]

And I really appreciate all of you, and I'm so grateful to be back at Ancient Dragon. Thank you all.

[53:51]

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