The unsurpassed profound and wondrous Dharma is rarely met with even in a hundred thousand million kalpas. Now I can see and hear it, accept and maintain it. May I unfold the meaning of the Tathagata's truth. When he's ready, Teigen will give today's docker talk. And Rupin, can you remove the? Yeah, good. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Can you hear me? Good. So today I want to talk about Sangha and resilience.

[01:05]

So resilience is about how do we maintain and nourish and develop our lives and our practice and our being in the world. This involves the fourth of our A transcendent practice is the fourth paramita, the practice of energy and enthusiasm. How do we sustain our energy? How do we sustain our enthusiasm for the affairs and activities of our life? This is our practice of resilience. It also involves the third paramita, the practice of patience, that is active patience, attentive patience, paying attention, and staying present in the midst of all of it.

[02:08]

So this is challenging. We live amid the reality of change. Some of the teachings say that the reality of change is permanent, so there's a permanent aspect to this, but practically speaking, in our lives, in our world, we are living amidst change. And among people in our Sangha, and of course, many people throughout our country and the world, there are a variety of personal changes, changing jobs, for many people in our country and in the world losing jobs. Moving our homes, so at least a few people in our sangha are involved in that, even today or recently. And relationships changing. Starting new relationships, losing relationships.

[03:14]

All of this is painful. Change is difficult. Sometimes change is helpful and wonderful. but also it's a challenge. How do we find our resilience? How do we sustain our energy, our enthusiasm, our caring about our lives and the world and the people around us amid change? So parts of this resilience involve finding what we enjoy. Bodhisattva practice. How do we enjoy ourselves? How do we enjoy the people around us? How do we enjoy our world? To sustain joy and enjoyment is part of our practice. How do we engage in the activities and the interests that bring us joy, that bring us enjoyment? And part of that is playfulness.

[04:21]

How do we not trying to figure it all out and decide what to do, although that's part of our lives, but also how do we play with the realities of our lives? How do we try new things? How do we improvise? So that's important to sustain resilience. And then also nourishment. What is it that nourishes us? This is an actual practice to look at what nourishes us? What supports our energy and enthusiasm? And then how do we nourish and support our friends, the people around us, our world? So all of this is about how to take care of our lives. Often,

[05:22]

This practice of resilience and nourishment and playfulness takes us beyond our comfort zones. So part of Bodhisattva practice with change is to be willing to be uncomfortable. To find our way of playing with discomfort of Breathing into it and breathing out of it. How do we accept this? And for all of this, our great gift is zazen. So this practice of zazen we've just done is about sitting upright, being present in this body, in this mind, in this heart, with this heart. Breathing in, breathing out, enjoying our inhale and our exhale. Feeling what we feel. seeing how we feel. So I've sometimes encouraged the mantra of, how does it feel?

[06:28]

Just actually feel what it's like to be present in this body, to be upright, to be breathing. That also nourishes our practice of resilience. So one of my favorite sentences from Dogen is to, this is from his essay, The Awesome Presence of Active Buddhas. And maybe there's no such thing as inactive Buddhas, but anyway, he says, just experience the vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha. Just experience the vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha. Some of you have heard me talked about this before, but maybe some of you haven't. Zazen is a vital process. So in sustaining and nourishing our practice of Zazen, naturally over time, I mean, the point of Zazen is just to continue, just continue a regular practice of sitting down,

[07:36]

inhaling and exhaling, facing the wall or facing our lives and being present. And if thoughts and feelings come up, we let them go. They may come up again. We enjoy the spaces around the thoughts and feelings, but we continue to be present in our body, in our lives, in this world. We sit like Buddhas. So when we had, we don't have a Buddha image in the center of this Zoom field, but in the center of our Zendo back in the old days at Irving Park, there was a altar with a Buddha sitting in the center. So we sit like Buddha, but in this body and mind, finding our way to be like Buddha, inhale and exhale, nourishing our awareness or practice. So sometimes people get bored with Zazen or get irritated at all the thoughts and feelings or feel discomfort in our bodies because all of that is also about our own physical selves, our shoulders, our knees, our lower back.

[08:55]

we find someplace that's uncomfortable. So how do we practice with this discomfort? How do we be present in the midst of this? This is the practice of resilience. And because this is a vital process on an active path, we don't necessarily know how our zazen is. Of course, we make judgments as human beings, and we sometimes make judgments about our Zazen, and we can make judgments about our judgments. But don't judge the judgments about your judgments. Just being upright and present is resilience, is nourishment. So this is about our practice of Zazen, which helps us be in this difficult world. So traditionally, this world that we are in, the Buddha field created by Shakyamuni Buddha 2,500 or so years ago in what's now northern India, is called the Saha world.

[10:01]

Saha is a Sanskrit word, but it means the world of endurance. So in our lives and in our world, there are many things that we have to endure. So the practice of resilience is how do we, again, how do we sustain our energy and our enthusiasm for being here in this difficult place? And this includes all the things that are happening that we know about in our world that are upsetting and challenging and dangerous and that we don't, know what to do about, but we see it. So climate catastrophes happening everywhere. Heat waves in Chicago, fires through the West Coast, fires in Southern Europe, Greece and Italy, flooding in many places in South Asia and in Northern Europe.

[11:04]

hurricanes, storms, so-called unusual 100-year climate events, weather events are happening every week, sometimes every day. So we're living in the midst of climate catastrophe. And of course, we can see the causes and conditions that we contribute to in our energy use, but also the way the fossil fuel companies knew about this decades ago, but instead of changing what they were doing, funded denial of it. Then there's the pandemic, which here in Chicago is eased, but now with the Delta variant, we don't know. It's resurging in some places in our country and the world. And how do we take care of not just our own country, but the world?

[12:12]

if the COVID virus is running rampant in Africa or India or South America, it just increases the mutations, which will come back to us. So we can't just protect our own world, our own country. We're connected. So one of the things this pandemic has taught us is how deeply interconnected we all are. This is a reality that Buddhism has taught going back 2,500 years, but we're interconnected. Things that happen in Greece or in India or in Africa or in South Asia affect us. And here we are in this Zoom world now. There's no central Buddha image to look at, but each of us is a Buddha image. And so I'm gonna talk more about Zoom in a little bit, but just to note that right now, there are people on this screen from South of Chicago and Joliet and Kankakee, a couple of people from the Bay Area, a couple of people here from New York City, people from Michigan,

[13:34]

a couple of people from New York City and someone from Sweden. Hi. So yeah, we're all interconnected. Oh, and I forgot Columbus, Ohio. Yes, hi. So this pandemic that, you know, in some ways we feel like it's easing. But it has been a great lesson to us. But it's also part of the world of endurance and the difficulty. And of course, many, many people are in great distress because of this, having lost jobs, having lost loved ones, having gotten ill. So this Zaha world is indeed challenging. Then there's all the racial injustice, which, maybe it doesn't impact those of us who are privileged and white, but it's part of our world and all of it actually affects us.

[14:39]

And that's an old, old pandemic from 400 years in this country and longer. And then of course, there's the endless wars. So today, the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul may be, fall to the Taliban, the rest of the country has. For those of us old enough to remember the fall of Saigon during the Vietnam War, it's déjà vu all over again. So the United States in the last 60 years has lost all its wars. I remember growing up, we could say that the United States has won all its wars. Not anymore. We lost the war in Vietnam. We lost the war in Iraq. We lost the war in Afghanistan. And partly that was because we started those wars, our government started those wars without understanding those cultures and actually knowing that they were unwinnable.

[15:46]

Our government knew. from the beginning that the war in Vietnam and the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan were unwinnable. So why did this happen? Well, there's clear reason that they're corporations who make weapon systems have been war profiteers. So Boeing and Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman and many other companies have made billions and billions of dollars from these wars. and then sent major donations to Congress people in both parties so that more wars would happen. So, okay, all of this is maybe depressing. Maybe we feel, actually feeling hopeless about any of these things plays into the denial. like the denial of climate change.

[16:48]

Because of bodhisattva resilience, none of these things is hopeless. Change is possible. We don't know how, but we can pay attention. And this applies to our personal lives too, and the sadnesses in our own lives. How do we find resilience? How do we face all of it with uprightness, with basic inner dignity, paying attention, trying to respond when we see some way to respond. And there are lots of people responding to all of this. We can learn about the history of racism in our country, for example, and we're doing that in our Friday morning discussion group. And many people around the country are just looking at this reality and looking at the reality of climate damage, climate catastrophes, seeing the need, and our government is starting to respond a little bit to the need to change our energy system.

[18:05]

The thing is, it's possible. We have solar energy and wind energy and alternative energies that are actually more economically feasible than fossil fuels. but the fossil fuel companies are invested in this as are the weapons makers invested in wars. So how do we respond? How do we encourage change? It's not clear, but it's also not impossible. So this is connected to the practice of resilience that we also need to take on in terms of our personal lives, in terms of the changes and sadnesses and losses and confusion in our own lives and in the lives of people around us. So I want to talk some about Sangha, community. This is one of the three jewels in Buddhism. Buddha, the jewel of awakening.

[19:08]

the reality of awakening in all things, this possibility that is on your seat right now, this reality that is on your seat right now that we need to open up to. And Dharma, which is reality and the teaching of reality and seeing the suchness of reality, including all of these things, including the change and including how all of these things have been going on for a long time. since before the Buddha. How do we face this? How do we be upright in our hearts and minds and be willing to face the discomfort of sadness, of loss, of change, of confusion, of fear? Of course, it's easy to feel overcome and feel afraid, This practice of Zazen and this practice of Sangha, Therjul, helps us to find resilience and nourishment.

[20:19]

So Sangha is complicated. Sangha is about, well, it's about spiritual friendship. It's about mutual support. One model of teaching teachers is spiritual friends. But in Sangha, all of us can be spiritual friends. And Sangha is a strange thing. All of us here together on this Zoom screen, if we met each other in some other context, we might not engage. In Sangha, sometimes there are people who we don't like or who rub us the wrong way. And particularly when Sangha is in person. So I wanna talk about the creative tension of Sangha in person and Sangha on Zoom. But when practicing in person, we have difficulties with people. Maybe that can happen on Zoom too. I may say some things or other people may say some things in the discussion, which I'm looking forward to, which irritates you.

[21:25]

That's part of the work of Sangha that we, learn to support each other, even if we disagree. So it's not necessary that you agree with all the things I've said. You may like war, I don't know. But here we are. How do we face the discomfort of being together? and practicing together, and then supporting each other with spiritual friendship. So this is a kind of mutual support. And how do we, and sitting together, whether we're sitting together on a Zoom screen or whether we're sitting together in a room in a temple, you know, we support each other by sitting upright, being present. And this is a wonderful thing.

[22:27]

And then in the work of Sangha, it's maybe more clear sometimes when we're sitting in a temple in person, but our upright sitting supports the people who are doing upright sitting on the cushion next to us. But maybe it's also true on Zoom. So this is part of the creative tension that we have now in terms of the jewel of Sangha. So I mentioned all the people who are here on the Zoom screen from many different places. And that's wonderful. And I may have left out some. But we're here together, thanks to Zoom, thanks to the pandemic. And we can talk together. And we can be together. And I want to try and stop Zoom so we can have discussion. But this is a kind of creative tension. Many of the people who practiced way back when we had a lovely storefront temple on Irving Park Road in Chicago, the people who practiced there in person in Chicago are really eager and yearning, many of them, I hear this, to have a place to practice together in person again.

[23:48]

At the same time, we have all of you who are here from distant places. We have this wonderful Zoom event that allows us to join together from a distance. So there's a kind of creative tension here. There's a kind of challenge to how to practice Sangha, how to do the practice of Sangha in this way. And I think this is a Sangha right here. All of you who can see each other's faces, those of you whose faces are not visible, but whose names are visible, all of us together, this is Sangha. So we are ancient dragons and gators working to find a new physical temple space. And that process is is happening and advancing in some ways.

[24:52]

We're also working to find a place where maybe we can rent a space, physical space in Chicago to sit in person until we have that new physical temple in place. However, to me, it's totally important that wherever we are sitting, temporarily in a rental space or in our new physical space, wherever that is in Chicago, that we also have access for Zoom for all of you coming from a distance on Zoom. That's totally essential for me. So we will do that. And many Zen groups around the country are working with that and experimenting with that. And there are various ways to have hybrid sanghas where We might be sitting in a room together, some of us, and yet I can see Eva in Sweden, and Paul in the Bay Area, and Ron in New York City, and Eileen in New York City.

[25:53]

That's what we're working at. And again, not to leave out Randy in Columbus. So this is our project, and we're working on it. And actually, this is for our announcements, but there will be a Sangha meeting the second Sunday in September on Zoom, where we will talk about all this and what's happening with our process of trying to find a space. So partly, I want to talk about the challenges of Sangha on Zoom. One of the things that's very important in Zen practice is ceremonies and rituals. So in the ceremonies that we do, when we have a physical place, back when we had our storefront little temple on Irving Park Road, we offered incense to Buddha, or if people were sensitive to smell, we offered flowers.

[27:05]

We made offerings to Buddha. And the doshir priest who was doing that on behalf of everybody in the room, we chanted together. There were people who hit bells and we have some of that now. But this ceremonial side of Zen, we also chanted to the ancestors. And we're together widely geographically and that's visible here, but also, this mutuality. Sangha is also through time. So there have been many other people who have appeared on Sunday morning Zooms, and we don't necessarily see them now, but they're part of this process. And there were many people who came to our temple on Irving Park, and they're part of this. And there are people in the future who will come to our new temple.

[28:07]

And there were people in the future who will come to our Zoom events. So it's not just in space and through different states and countries, but also through time that we are connected. And our ceremonies are about that, about invoking the ancestors. We have these spiritual ancestors going back to Shakyamuni. We also have many other cultural ancestors So Paul, who's an architect and carpenter and constructs temples, has Japanese ancestors who were temple designers and temple architects. And the ancestors who did that in Tang China, where the forms were brought to Japan. So these forms are very important. Part of it is just the form of Zazen, sitting upright. And on this Zoom, so how do we do this in Zoom? This has been a challenge to me, how to do ceremonies on Zoom.

[29:11]

And we do a little bit, you know? So our practice is to, when you enter the Zoom, our Zoom page, and your face is evident, please bow to the screen, and then turn to the side a little bit. or in profile. That's one form we do. And we do chanting. So today, Ruben is doing the bells and leading the chanting. But I would like to encourage everybody when the chant is on the screen, even though you're silent, to chant aloud where you are. with Ruben and with the chant on the screen. This is a kind of ceremony. And even if we can't hear you all, because Zoom doesn't, well, I think there may be ways in Zoom to do that, but that's not part of what we've been doing. But everybody chanting aloud in their own place is part of the ceremony of Sangha.

[30:15]

So, This is a really creative and challenging time. This is a new phase of Zen Buddhism. How do we practice Sangha and Buddha and Dharma in this context, in this world where each of us is in one place and yet we're all together here? So those are just some of my reflections on Sangha. And resilience is about how do we sustain this? How do we bring our energy and enthusiasm to this? Even at times when it feels like our practice is boring or when all the thoughts and feelings are irritating. Again, just to experience the vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha. So already, in some real way, each of you are Buddha. And yet we can't just hang out there.

[31:17]

The world is changing, our lives are changing. How do we reawaken in every period of Sazen? How do we reawaken with each other in Sangha? How do we support each other? Whether we're in the same room or on a Zoom page. So this is the challenge, the creative tension, of Zen Buddhism in our world today. And I appreciate all of you are here. There are numbers of our Sangha members who are away on vacation because it's August, I guess. So it's the vacation time for a lot of people, but here we are. And so that's maybe enough of my babbling, but I really appreciate this Sangha and what we can do for Sangha on Zoom and also the limitations of it. But how do we sustain our practice? How do we continue to come back to our seat? How do we continue to come back to the Zoom page and see each other and talk together?

[32:23]

So I want to open this up for questions. Questions, comments, perspectives. If you're visible on the screen, you can just raise your hand. If you're not visible, you can go to the participants window and there's a box on the bottom to raise your hand. And Ruben, if you would help me call on people. So comments, perspectives, questions, reflections, please. Zonga is also about our talking together. Deborah, did I see your hand? Sure, I'll speak. Yeah, so I've been without a Sangha for about eight years and what sustained me is a deep intention of connecting to my practice. So I adhere to my forms, the forms I learned when I practiced with others, I adhere to them and they help me sustain my practice.

[33:28]

So for example, I bow formally to my cushion. I just try to sustain my body connection and that helps me sustain and connect to your Sangha. Thank you, and thank you for being part of our sangha. Actually, Deborah is one of our assistant directors. She has an important position at Ancient Dragons Zen Gate. And one of the things about Zoom, when we had our temple on Irving Park Road, there were lots of things for people to do. Cleaning the temple, arranging the cushions, cooking for people during retreats, serving, greeting, hitting the bells, hitting the mokugyo sometimes. It feels like there's a little less of that on Zoom, but also people have been asking me, how can we help? And so we have this event of the Zoom page happens thanks to many people. So anyway, that's something that we are also exploring on Zoom.

[34:34]

So other comments, responses, reflections, please. Yes. Thank you, Paul. Thank you for being here. I'm just thinking, thinking back on how Suzuki Roshi treated, treated the Sangha. And basically I was thinking that he treated everybody he met as if they were a Sangha member and as if, as if they were part of, part of his, his world. And people responded very brightly to that. It was a very, he got a very bright response from people, that sort of immediate connection. Meeting people without judgment is a very powerful way of relating, and it usually gets quite a positive response. And what you started talking about first in the topsy-turvy world that we live in,

[35:40]

I remember as I was on my way to Japan and going into an environment that I had no experience of and not knowing what was going to come up next. And Katagiri Roshi was at Tassajara at the time. And he caught me in the upper garden. And he stood there in the upper garden with his feet sort of spread apart and his arms in the air. And he said, keep a firm grip on the void. And that advice was very powerful and very useful for me. We have to keep our discipline, keep ourselves together, but not rely on anything. It's sort of the Zen trick. Yeah. That's one way to talk about resilience, maintaining a firm grip on the void. I love it. And Paul, I just want to say for people who don't know, maybe you all know, but Paul Disko was a disciple of Suzuki Roshi, lives in Oakland.

[36:54]

So thanks to Zoom, he comes here and he's the Sado, the regular visiting teacher of our sangha. And I just want to thank you. I want to thank all of you for being here in the Saga, but Paul is a great inspiration for all of us. So thank you very much. A firm grip on the void. OK. Anybody else? Any comments, responses, reflections, perspectives? We're all here together. And again, you can hit the raise hands button in the participant window if you can't see. So is that David Ray? Yes. Thank you, Taigan. I just wanted to say, I mean, so first off, thank you. Thank you for talking about Sanda in this strange time. It sometimes seems to me that there are, well, there are so many different ways to react to this

[37:56]

environment that we're in. Some people speak as if we are separated from Sangha. Some people just really don't like Zoom. And Zoom doesn't feel like Sangha for some people. And I'm one of those people for whom Zoom does feel like Sangha. And there are moments when I feel sadness, and to be honest, even, you know, a certain, you know, righteous indignation. I want to say, everybody should come to Zoom Sangha and be here. But I think the truth is that for some people, Zoom feels like, you know, just more loneliness and doesn't feel like Sangha. I just want to put that out there. I'm very grateful for this version of Sangha. Good. Yes. Thank you. And, you know, there's an old description of monastic practice, which is being alone together. So each of us is in our own little box on the Zoom page. And back in Irving Park, each of us was on our own cushion facing our own little piece of the wall.

[39:02]

But we do it together. So there's a dynamic there that is an attention there that's part of what can encourage us to sustain this. And just to note that Eve commented that she wants t-shirts that say, keep a firm grip on the void. Maybe we can try and produce those. Doug, maybe you can help us with that. Anyway, so thank you. Other comments about sangha, about practice and Zoom, about being in the world. And yes, to just echo what David said, there are many, many of our Sangha members from the old, old days at Irving Park who have trouble with Zoom. And we want to include them as well as all of you coming from California and New York and Sweden and whatever. So it's how to do all this is, again, as I say, a creative tension. Other comments, please.

[40:05]

Debra, go ahead. Oh, Dylan. Go ahead, Dylan. Dylan first, then Debra. So I don't know exactly how this is going to come out. So I think I'm just going to ramble and see if something honest comes out. I think this is an incredibly difficult and strange time to be alive. You know, like, I still think back to, you know, the fact that, you know, Donald Trump was elected president and just like, that that was a fact that really happened, you know, and that the pandemic is happening and all of the psychological and emotional effects of that and all of the deaths, the millions of people, the climate catastrophe, and Afghanistan falling, it's just, it's like, it just seems like one of the most difficult times in my memory of my life, you know.

[41:22]

And I guess in terms of what that means about practice, what this means about, you know, practice for me is, yeah, it's just, Um, I think when I first started practicing back in the old days, when we had the temple on urban park, I was, um, you know, really looking forward to doing Zen well, or being a good practitioner or, uh, um, you know, going on Zen adventures and visiting different temples and, uh, having, having moments of, of awakening and understanding reality and all this stuff. And I think the, uh, I don't know how much of it is, how, what the difficulty of this particular context of life right now and how much of it is just the narrative of my life or how I'm thinking about my life right now.

[42:28]

But like, I feel like I know I have less, uh, certainty about whether I'm doing anything right at this time. Uh, and, and more just sort of attitude of like surrender of just like doing Zazen and trusting that things will be okay in whatever direction they go. And like still doing the things that feel like they're just things to do, but it's a strange, there's a little bit of loss that I feel about this feeling that I used to have of like feeling like I was doing a good job, you know, or whatever. But like, I feel like it's maybe the more that I kind of abandon judging myself in comparison to other people, the more real things are, I guess.

[43:29]

I don't know, that's just a ramble, but it's what's on my mind. Thank you, Dylan. Good ramble. Yes, trying to be good, trying to do the right thing, that can be a trap. We can think we're being helpful and cause all kinds of harm. So it's tricky how to do Bodhisattva practice, how to be helpful in the world. It's not simple. But I want to go back to what you said about this is a very dangerous time. I agree with you as a amateur student of history. This is all the things I mentioned and the things that I didn't mention that are happening now. This is a dangerous, perilous time. However, I just want to add that Buddhist practitioners for centuries and millennia have felt that in their times.

[44:29]

So Dogen, our founder in Japan in the early 1200s, he lived in a time when there were civil wars and he grew up in Kyoto and there were literally bodies littering the streets. So that was a difficult time and the government was changing and there was civil war. Many times in the world, practitioners have felt like this is a terrible time. And I'm saying that even though I agree with you, Dylan, that this is, you know, with climate catastrophe and wars and racial injustice and the pandemic and all that. And I could mention the buildup of nuclear arsenals and all of that. It's a really dangerous time on a global level. Part of that is that we're more aware.

[45:31]

Now that could be, that might, how much that helps, we don't know. But being aware of all these things, you know, one t-shirt slogan that I could offer to even others, awareness itself is, awareness is transformative. Our awareness changes things. So to be present on a Zoom page with people from different countries and different states, I mean, that awareness changes things. This is not just, you know, kind of some idea of mine, it's physics. You know, the Heisenberg principle says that if you observe something, and physics shows that if you observe an event, it changes the event. So our awareness, our awakeness is actually very positive. So we have, so Debra was next and then Eve. I'm tempted to have Eve speak next, but I guess I can speak.

[46:42]

I was just trying to support that Our practice is, even though it seems like we're very alone in it, it's very, very expansive. And it's trusting, I call it the faith mind or this trusting bodhicitta in a deep way. What is going on in zazen? And since I have been practicing alone for a while, It's made me actually connect to my practice in a much deeper way. It took a few years, but it really did. The aloneness made me really value it. And other things fell away. I feel very fortunate that happened. But I just wanted to support that the face-to-face we experience on Zoom, if you bring your Zazen mind just to like a gentle openness to it, And it kind of just holding the space and realizing each person here wants to be here. And it is, in a sense, a very alive sangha. So I'm finished.

[47:43]

Thank you. I'm losing my mind. Thank you, Deborah. There was something I wanted to say about what you said. And now I'll come back to that. Well, just the point of Our activity in Sangha, each of us, again, it supports each other. This is a very dynamic situation. And it's even more creative and dynamic in the situation of some people in our Sangha in Chicago really yearning to sit together in person. And we're starting to do that. And then also, and it looks like we will be able to do that, but also people from a distance joining and meeting face to face like this. So meeting face to face is a big part of Zen practice. Dogen talks about meeting face-to-face with the teacher. But also now we're meeting face-to-face as Zonga in actually a way that is not as easy or evident as sometimes in person when there's a big room and you can't really see the face of the person across the room, as Paul Disko pointed out about Zoom.

[49:03]

Anyway, let's continue. Eve? One, you know, when I was listening to Dylan, what he said resonated with me with a poem that I wrote the other day, and I wondered if I could read it. Sure. Poetry is very welcome. Yeah, because I wrote it partly because I was mad at the way a lot of, well, the leaders in my own field now in public health or the way people in positions of power have to me, have been undermining Songha by some of the messages that they were sending. Anyway, so I wrote the poem. These are the times that try our souls. Seeking safety, we drive RVs down a dry and bumpy road. Hope, a mirage shining distant in the tarmac, which disappears as we draw closer, trailing a heavy viral load.

[50:08]

Are we a danger to our children, or are they to us? Will closeness ever bring us other than unease? The future's face forever hidden beneath a mask. Places once complacent are now ravaged by disease. Alpha, gamma, delta, count the variants. evolutionary twists and turns that taunt us. Short-sighted expediency and gain, the link to climate change, undermine the age that was supposed to be Aquarius. Bureaucrats surely lacking in systemic wisdom, not to mention what should be common knowledge of the heart, sent errant messages of liberation, celebrating selfishness, tying it to freedom, but tearing us apart. The iron tendril roots that tie us all together are what we should be naming and proclaiming. We're all carriers. Carrying each other, though granted, it seems a paradox to show caring and connectedness through mandated jabs and barriers.

[51:14]

Thank you, Eve. I sometimes think that I don't read enough poetry in my Dharma talks. Poetry helps because it's not, you know, precise. Linear awareness, but anyway, I know there are a bunch of poets here. Ron, do you have any poems you want to share? Or you could come back if you find one. No, no, no, no, no. Okay, here's one. This is one that I did a reading a week and a half ago. It was in the most amazing setting for reading. It was a townhouse on Cornelia Street that's up for sale for $9.8 million. And I dug out things I'd written in the 1970s. And this is, well, this is something that I wrote in 1970.

[52:30]

That was a song that was performed by a Morningside Heights band called Death City Survivors. And I call it, I don't know how relevant it is, but I'll go ahead with it anyway. I call it my homage to Aristophanes. It's titled Frogs. And it's kind of the revolutionary impulse in a way. I've got my stash right here in my pocket, got a carbine in my hand. And if you want to know just which way to go, well, you can follow me to the hidden land. We're going to boogie all over the heavens, rocking in four by four, drop celestial acid 30 times a day, come running back for more. Then it's down to the train train station for our little midnight escapade. We're going to group the president's motor car with a red, white, blue grenade. Then we'll fill our pipes with opium and we'll stuff our heads with dreams. We're going to waltz across the great waters to the music of their screams and then we'll break it up and shake it up and open up the portal and all climb in between. We're going to break it up and shake it up and open up the portal and all climb in between like frogs.

[53:34]

So it's kind of, in a way, it's kind of an anti-war song coming from the left. Thank you, Ron. So Ron mentioned Cornelia Street, but for those of you in Chicago, he's not talking about the Cornelia Street here. Ron lives in Manhattan in New York City and we were- There's a short block, Cornelia Street in the West Village. Yeah. Ron and I were friends back in the late 60s in New York City. Yeah. One of the ways, you know, trying to talk about all of this is, you know, there's so many things going on. How do we say anything? And, you know, Zen koans are a lot like poetry. They get in between the words. Other comments? We still have a little bit of time for anyone who has thoughts to share.

[54:36]

Doug, are you? Yeah, go ahead. Oh, man, this is so great. I'm feeling so at home and have and I am at home, you know, and that's kind of the having kind of a gratitude attack here. This is this is awesome. Thank you guys so much. And what? Wow, tagging you just kind of bundled it up all real, real good. And I'm going to need some kind of artwork to go with these with these slogans. I, I working on a bunch of bunch of shirts for, for did tour, of course, and festivals, and ironically, came up with a lot of Loraxes. Let me see. Can you see them? I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. And on the back of this one, we've got, unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.

[55:41]

It's not, which is the whole point of the Lorax thing that Dr. Seuss people gave me a high five on, actually. And then I have a lot of other art that I'm anxious to be selling around the country and just getting off to a good start here. I have a friend from Oakland that's here, and I know people up in Minneapolis, and I'm going to be getting out to New York City. And I hope a lot of people, when dead in company, come to Chicago, will find me and join me and grab a free t-shirt from the Sanghas. Man, this is getting to be such home for me. I watched a movie last night that I'm sure most of you have seen and, you know, I kind of wound up with too many of these Lorax shirts and the biodiesel debacle of cutting trees to, you know, get energy and it's just horrendous, you know?

[56:57]

And so I think, The Lorax is, you know, the cutting of trees and the burning of trees and it's just something that our planet has got a problem with, you know, and so I'm sure, you know, serendipitously, this is going to be a great shirt to be taken around with a whole bunch of others I've got, of course. I look forward to working on the sangha if there's needing to be anything. I wish that we didn't get... Oops, it looks like Doug froze. Can you hear me? Doug's connection is somewhat tenuous sometimes, which happens to all of us. Doug, are you there? I am, I can hear you. Oh yeah, you froze for a bit there.

[57:57]

Oh, I'm sorry. So yeah, I was rambling pretty good anyway, so you didn't miss much. But I'm just so grateful and looking forward to maybe you guys coming down here. The Frank Lloyd Wright is right down the street. I was thinking the other day that... I thought he was dead. There's a house down the street. And in the basement of this house is all the all the old tools that they use. And it's actually they're turning it into a museum now. So I thought that sometime if Paul's ever back, that'd be so cool for him to come down. And I just look forward to you know, like you said in your in your opening that in the talk that there's so much I'm looking forward to and and so much I'm feeling connected with you guys here. And you've been so supportive for me for the last couple of years that I'm just really grateful.

[59:02]

Thank you. Thank you so much, Doug. And actually, that's something I forgot to mention. I was talking about the tools of resilience and nourishment in terms of, where is it? I've got my notes here. in terms of joyfulness, in terms of finding enthusiasm, in terms of, well, kindness. One of the things I forgot to mention, though, was gratitude. And so thank you for that, Doug. Feeling grateful for the things we have to feel grateful for is great support, great nourishment for Sangha for resilience, for staying with our uprightness. So Doug, you may have gathered, makes t-shirts.

[60:03]

He made some of the ancient dragon Zen gate t-shirts that some of you have seen. And So thank you for that. And so, you know, Eve's request, Doug, is that you make a T-shirt from what Kategori Roshi told Paul, which is keep a firm grasp on the void. So that's a good T-shirt slogan. I agree with you, Eve. So you might try that, Doug. But Doug, you didn't mention the movie you saw last night. Oh, Our Planet. dot com, I think, where they kind of are showing how the lot of our attempts at, you know, alternative energy have been disastrous and and worse for the environment than actually. You know. Fossil fuels. It's pretty informative. Yeah, I think I did see that just called our planet and, you know, the clear cutting of trees is just.

[61:06]

So sad and couldn't be more wrong, you know? Yeah. I recently heard about shade-grown coffee. For those of you who are coffee drinkers like me, there are companies that have shade-grown coffee that do not require cutting down of trees to grow the coffee beans anyway. There are all kinds of things that people are, ways that people are finding to be, constructive and positive. So this is our challenge as the world Sangha. So thank you for everyone's comments. But does anybody else have any responses or poetry or reflections for anything we've talked about? Paul, yes, please. You're muted, Paul. I would like to say something somewhat in response to Dylan, but also, I heard this report on public radio the other day about the psychological state of the world's population.

[62:26]

And apparently, Americans are far more individualistic than anybody else on the planet. And that's sort of one of our key, hallmarks is this intense individualism, which, of course, is the other direction from sangha. But just like when Suzuki Roshi came here and he found us not knowing anything about Buddhism and how how much we were confused on the subject, but he found that the beginner's mind, because we were so intense on learning, that the beginner's mind was quite a wonderful state, and that the people in Japan that he was used to sort of knew all about it, and they sort of had it with their rice in the morning, and it was not sort of new and exciting and interesting, and they just sort of took it for granted and didn't really pay much attention to the Buddhism.

[63:32]

and that we felt the need and saw the separation and were eager to practice and discover. And I think that's why the United States maybe can be the leader in this new way of seeing the world, because we have the farthest. We're the farthest from it, so we have the most to gain. where other people are nestled in their own little set social environments that don't have such a burning need. Anyway, I'm just hoping that we could turn this vast separation into a togetherness. Wow. Yes, I'm grateful for that. Thank you for channeling Suzuki Roshi for us all, Paul. Maybe on that note, Ruben, if we can do our closing chants.

[64:33]

And again, if people would be muted, but also in your own space, Chantal. Thank you, Tegan. I'm now going to bring up the PowerPoint. We'll now chant the Repentance Verse three times together, followed by the Enmei Jikku Kanon Gyo seven times together. All my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow.

[65:36]

All my ancient twisted karma From beginningless greed, hate, and delusion Born through body, speech, and mind I now fully avow All my ancient twisted karma From beginningless greed, hate, and delusion Born through body, speech, and mind I now fully avow EN MEI JUKU KANON GYO KAN ZE YON NAMU BUTSU YO BUTSU U IN YO BUTSU U EN BU PO SO EN

[66:55]

Gyoja, Raguja, Gyocho, Nen, Kanzeon, Bonen, Kanzeon, Nen, Nen, Jushin, Ki, Nen, Furishin, Kanzeon, Namu, Butsu, Yo, Butsu, Uen, Yo, Butsu, Uen, Bupo, Soen, Joraku, Gajo, Cho, Nen, HAN ZE YON BO DEN ZE YON NEN NEN JU SHIN KI NEN NEN PU RI SHIN HAN ZE YON NA MU BU TSU YO BU TSU U IN YO BU TSU U EN BU PO SO EN JO RAK BU GA JO NEN KAN ZE YON BO NEN KAN ZE YON NEN NEN ZHU SHIN GYI NEN NEN BU RI SHIN KAN ZE YON NA MU BU TSU YO BU TSU WU YIN YO BU TSU

[68:05]

EN BU PO SO EN JO RAKU GA JO CHO NEN KAN ZE ON BO NEN KAN ZE ON NEN NEN JU SHIN KI NEN NEN KU RI SHIN KAN ZE ON Mu Butsu Yo Butsu U In Yo Butsu U En Bu Po So En Jo Rak Gu Ga Jo Cho Nen Kan Ze On Bo Nen Kan Ze On Nen Nen Ju Shin Ki NEN FURI SHIN KAN ZE YON NAMU BUTSU YO BUTSU U IN YO BUTSU U EN BU PO SO EN JO RAKU GA JO CHO NEN KAN ZE YON BO NEN KAN ZE YON NEN JU SHIN KI NEN NEN FU RI SHIN GAN ZE YON NAMU BUTSU YO BUTSU U WIN YO BUTSU U WEN BU PO SO WEN JO RAKU GA JO CHO NEN GAN ZE YON BO NEN GAN ZE YON NEN NEN JU SHIN KI NEN NEN FU RI SHIN

[69:34]

May all awakened beings extend with true compassion their luminous mirror wisdom. With full awareness we have chanted the Enmei Jikku Kanon Gyo. We dedicate this merit to our original ancestor in India, great teacher Shakyamuni Buddha. Our first woman ancestor, great teacher, Maha Pachapati. Our first ancestor in China, great teacher, Bodhidharma. Our first ancestor in Japan, great teacher, Eihei Dogen. Our first ancestor in America, great teacher, Shogaku Shunryu. The perfect wisdom, Bodhisattva Manjushri. to the complete recovery from illness of Vivian Garrett, Bob Finn, David Martz, Susan Hawkinson, Alison Snow Wesley, and Fred Wesley, the Mercers in Virginia, Judith Burrows, Catherine Floyd, Michael Weisbrod, Jerry Lazars, Joseph Welch, Stephen Kane, Betsy Delahunt, Anna Analbrecht, Charlotte Iannone,

[71:02]

Jacob Blake, Jeff Shepard, Mary Shepard, Susan and Albert Easton, Michael Soter, Sophia Walensky, Susanna Taylor, Bill Allinger, Jeremy Hammond, Jackie Floyd, Rebecca and Cole Lindberg, Avery Miller, Matt West, Ron Hagen, Alex Hagen, Marla Weiner, Tom Kelly, Jody Kretzmann, Joey Weiserich, Lise Farrakian, Leonard Peltier, Carrie Greenspan, Kinji Kawasaki, Joan Sofie, Herb Cutchins, Joel Orlov, Steve Halaf, Beth Joyner, Kyle D. Wade, Virginia Van Curen, Chris Summers, Dennis Olson, Jim Abrams, Lynn Easton, Jean Annaporte, Barbara Mattaris, Kate Lamothe, Paul Baker, Jenny Obst, Matt Wolfe, Fred Macklenburg, Ed Bossler, Ruyel Ho, Iris Bestow, Carla Randall, Robert French,

[72:24]

Shauna Ellis, Gil Yong Suh, Jimmy Carter, Mary Mandarino, Rachel Stein, Norman Hughes, Bart Kalopi, Linshan Zhang, Zoe Nissa, Brenda Gross, Kathy Fleming, Howard Pollack, Pat Pollack, Faustino Dionisio Jr., Frank Ostaseski, Jeff Bridges, Shosan Vicky Austin, Peter Overton, Dick Nathan, Kondo Nakajima Roshi, Jarvis Masters and all residents of San Quentin Prison, victims of gun violence, people under drone attack, all in the fracking zones, all facing fire and drought in California, all those threatened by the coronavirus throughout the world, Amazonian and other indigenous peoples threatened by corporate invasion, the people of Colombia and Palestine suffering from institutional violence, Lake Michigan and the Chicago River, peoples of the Mideast, and to all those who are lacking shelter, food, or safety, are suffering from physical or emotional distress, or are exposed to violence of any kind.

[73:45]

And to the fulfillment of practice of all members of all Sanghas, gratefully we offer this virtue to all beings, all Buddhas throughout space and time. All honored ones, Bodhisattvas, Mahasattvas. Wisdom beyond wisdom. Mahaprajnaparamita.

[74:26]

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