I vow to teach the truth of God as I confess to it. I vow to teach the truth of God as I confess to it. I vow to teach the truth of God as I confess to it.

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I vow to teach the truth of God as I confess to it. I vow to teach the truth of God as I confess to it. I vow to teach the truth of God as I confess to it.

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I vow to teach the truth of God as I confess to it. I vow to teach the truth of God as I confess to it. I vow to teach the truth of God as I confess to it.

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I vow to teach the truth of God as I confess to it. [...]

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I vow to teach the truth of God as I confess to it. [...]

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I vow to teach the truth of God as I confess to it. [...]

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I vow to teach the truth of God as I confess to it. [...] He saw little dead bugs and he saw bugs running around because their homes had been ruined. So he saw, even though there was a lot of excitement, he saw that there was also a lot of suffering involved.

[09:06]

Even in opening the earth and blessing the earth to bring forth the cross. And this affected him very deeply. He was a child who saw into the pain and suffering and joy of life very clearly. He didn't want to go back to the crowd. He didn't want to be part of the celebration. So he walked on the edge of the field where there hadn't been any ground. He walked in the high grass. And he walked until he came to a quiet grove that was off to the side. And he felt a lot of pain inside of his little body because he was quite little. He felt a lot of confusion and unhappiness and also sorrow. There was a huge tree right there in the corner of the grove. And he sat down on the tree and he thought very, very carefully about what he had seen. And pretty soon he fell asleep. Well, his mother, the queen, actually she wasn't his full mother, but the mother who was taking care of him.

[10:09]

Because his full mother had died right after he was born. And this woman was his mother's sister. So his mother's sister went to look for him. She couldn't find him and she was quite worried. She walked all around the edge of the field and she saw him sleeping under the tree. So she sat next to the tree and waited. And when he woke up he was refreshed. He had kind of come back to himself. And he told her what he had seen and how it had made him feel. And went on with his life. But that was an event that affected him very deeply as a child. And made him feel kind of sad. Or at least that something, not everything was as beautiful as it seemed like it was when he lived in the palace. Right after that he was walking in the gardens around the palace. And this was a little while ago, not much. You may know the story of the swan. Some beautiful swans were flying over here. Do you know this story? And one of the swans fell right at his feet with an arrow in his side.

[11:11]

What did he do? He picked up the swan and the arrow was in the side of the swan. What happened? He pulled the arrow out. And then there was some blood coming out of the side of the swan. So he took off his shirt. It was all made of soft silk. And he wrapped it around the swan. And he swabbed up the wound. Looked the swan's upper wound. The swan kind of nestled into his arms. He kind of became like his baby. And he petted it and stroked it. He was very frightened. His eyes were kind of flickering. And he looked into the swan's eyes. Tried to calm it down. Then he went and he sat on the edge of the garden. He was getting ready to try to do something about the wound when his cousin, Devadatta, ran to the garden and said, Siddhartha, Siddhartha. Because that was the name. That was the name everybody called him by. Siddhartha, Prince Siddhartha. I shot a swan. I got it.

[12:14]

I got it with my arrow. And it's somewhere here in this garden. Prince Siddhartha wasn't all that pleased about this. And his cousin was even less pleased when he looked down and saw the swan in his cousin's arms. He said, That's my swan. I want that swan. Give him back to me. Give him back to me. He's mine. I've got him. And the young Buddha protected him and said, He's hurt. You can't. What are you going to do with him? You have to take care of him. I want to take care of him. He's hurt. Anyway, they had kind of a fight or a tussle. Siddhartha tried to keep his cousin away. And his cousin was pretty upset because he really wanted the swan that he had gotten. Anyway. Some of the elder people of the palace came. Eventually the king himself came. And they watched the two children arguing or at least discussing what to do with the swan. And do you know what they decided to do? They thought actually it was good for the children to be discussing this. And it had to be decided whose swan was the swan.

[13:14]

Did you remember what they did, Audrey? Do you know, Eric? I've forgotten. You've forgotten. We'll make it fresh again. What happened to him? They brought him to the court. And lots of white people came. And he showed. And there was one old white man came. And he said that Buddha should have it because he tried to save it. And his cousin tried to hurt it. That's great. And what's the most important thing for people? One of the most important things this old man had said. Remember? Exactly. To save your life and to protect your life and to honor human life. Or not only human life but all forms of life. So therefore. And nobody knew where he'd come from, right? He just came out of the blue sky and appeared. He was not a person that they'd seen. He was a very old, old, old man.

[14:16]

And he said, because we honor life as the most precious gift, let's let Siddhartha keep the swan because he chose to protect life. And I think even Devadatta understood this. Anyway, this was one of the teaching stories in the life of the prince. And he grew up. And he went out of the palace. In fact, he did decide that he wanted to be a religious teacher. That he wanted to go out and meet the suffering that he felt in the world. And try to do something about it. At the age of 35, he became, you know, he woke up. Here's an injection on the object here. Here he comes. He's smiling. Looking at all of you. Helping you, reminding you of the things you did. Anyway, he went out into the world. And he searched for his entire life before he was quite an old man. And he thought, and wandered all over India. And it's his teaching that we're looking at today.

[15:19]

That we practice when we sit still in this big room. Or in our own homes. Wherever you are. Yes? Also, he starved himself. He did, didn't he? Go ahead. And a crow from his family came to his river. So there were eggs and some water in the river. And some milk. And he asked... It's part of your life, you know. This story. That's what I think. And then his friend said, Gee, somebody who would eat rice and milk from a girl is probably not a very good religious teacher, right? But he wasn't looking. He found that living in the palace, living a very luxurious, comfortable life, wasn't any better than starving people. And he tried to find what we call the middle way.

[16:21]

Or the way right down the middle, where he wouldn't be starving himself, and wouldn't be able to overeat. Wouldn't be eating too much, or taking in too much. Anyway, he dedicated his life to finding that way and teaching. And he was a very good teacher. Now, the last story I want to tell, actually I have two more short stories to tell. One is a story about other forms of life that the Buddha took. Because he realized that not only human forms were teaching forms, but also that all different kinds of forms of life could teach. Stone could teach. Rock could teach. Trees and flowers. Probably... He didn't talk too much about the teaching of garbage, but all kinds of teachers are possible futures. There's a wonderful story of a king in India, that Buddha told to his disciples. A king who had a dream of building a beautiful temple. And in order to build this temple,

[17:24]

which he was dedicated to understanding and love and peace, he went into a huge forest around his palace and found a gigantic, let's say redwood tree. Beautiful redwood tree. I know. You do, I know. It's in my book too. It's in your book, right. That's right. There's a book written for children that has this story in it. And I thought if I told stories out of that tree, he'd help me. So that was my idea. And I'm glad you read the book. He's keeping me right on my toes. So, he looked at that tree. The king looked at that tree and he said, that's the tree I want for my palace. And he ordered all of his helpers to... Go ahead, Danny. Cut it down. Cut it down, right. What happened to it? Somebody said if you cut it down to the bottom, then no human can hold for it. So, he climbed up the top and cut it down. That's really right. But you know how he knew that? In the night after he designated that tree as the tree for his palace,

[18:26]

he had a dream. And the tree spirit appeared to him and said, you're a magician. Please don't cut me down. You can have a fine palace without cutting down trees and building them. You can have a palace at my feet. I'll shelter you. The king said, well, I'm very sorry. I want a fine palace where I can sit inside and have my disciples be there and I can be comfortable and I can teach. The tree tried to persuade him not to do it. The king was pretty resolute, pretty determined to do it. So, finally the tree yielded. And the tree said, all right, then. It's going to hurt. It's going to hurt. Cutting down a tree is not an easy thing. I'm going to feel it. But if you must do this, then I ask only one favor. And the king said, certainly I'll grant it to you. You are magnificent. Definitely I'll do it. The tree said, have your chopper, your woodman, climb up to my upper branches and cut me in sections. Because if you cut me down all at once, I will crush the other trees and the animals in the forest.

[19:27]

So I'd like you to cut me in small sections. The king said, wait a minute, wait a minute. That's going to really hurt if we cut you 15 times, 20 times. I'll have to do it like that. The tree said, this is exactly what I want. Because that way there will be less suffering. So when the king heard that, what did he decide? He decided that he wouldn't do it. He decided he'd rather not have a palace. And in fact, it changed his life. So they say that in a former life, the baby Buddha lived in that tree and was a teacher through the mouths of trees. I like that story a lot because it reminds us that all kinds of life can teach. What we call animate and inanimate objects clearly teach the known. So that tree story is such a story. In fact, that king became an excellent king. He's the kind of king we need today to help us remember, to listen to the lives of trees and birds and animals.

[20:30]

We have one more story before you guys can go and play. This is a story of, another story of, that we were told to give disciples when we were teachers. It's the story of a famous acrobat. A man who was a, do you know what an acrobat is, Rachel? You don't? Have you ever seen a tightrope walker? They can walk through very, very special little stumps. Have you? In the circus? Well, in India, there are many people that were very, that lived a very difficult life and they had to do tricks on the street to raise money. You have some kind of people today do that too. They make an offering and they ask you to help support their life. Well, this man, who was a famous acrobat, and his daughter walked the streets of northern India where the Buddha lived and they performed tricks in order to sustain their lives. His wife had died, his mother had died, the young girl's mother had died. It was just the father and his daughter doing these tricks.

[21:34]

And what he would do is he got a long bamboo pole and he put it on his forehead and he would walk like this with the long bamboo pole and his daughter would balance on the top of the pole like a swan. She would balance. And then he would walk the streets balancing that pole with his daughter on the top. In perfect concentration. And people would gather around in awe and they would realize what a lot of effort it took to do this trick and they would help support their life. This is how they lived. And they were a wonderful team. They worked very hard together. They were very loving and careful with each other. And one day the father said to his daughter, his name was Megha, he said, you know little Megha, you and I take very good care of each other. You pay attention to me and take good, good care of me and I'll take good care of you. And when we're doing our trick, I'll put all my attention on you and you put all of your attention on me and therefore we'll be able to support our lives and to live. This was his teaching to her. And she was a very wise teacher

[22:38]

which is why Buddha told the story of his child. And she said, Father, I, excuse me, you've almost got it right but not quite. She said, I think what has to happen is you pay good attention to yourself and I'll pay good attention to myself and that way I won't fall and you won't drop me and we'll be able to support our lives. And the Buddha said, you know, this story is very true. Each person has to be very, very aware of their own life and how they're living the world. And if you do that, that helps you take care of other people. First step. And I think that's a pretty, that's a pretty true story. Have you ever heard that story? Good, I'm glad that's your first story. Fine. That's Neda and her father. You've heard that other, you've heard the other story, I know. Thank you. Thank you for coming.

[23:42]

I hope to come again, to come and come to you for the next time. Thank you for being here today. Thank you. I realize that not all of us have children, but all of us have been children. And I've spent quite a lot of time in the last couple of years,

[24:49]

particularly after being at Sun Center for 15 years, you know, practicing as a lay woman, family member, a mother, a guardian, all these different veils. I'm particularly, in the last couple of years, moved by the active, alert practice of children. Makes me, I find it very inspiring. Children and the teachings they so clearly pick up with. And I think that it would be interesting, I'd like to try to talk a little bit about some of the treasures that I've seen and heard come from children, just so that we can appreciate how much in our day and times right now, everybody's practicing, and especially it's wonderful to see how earnest children are. Helps us remember our roots. So these stories of the Buddha,

[25:52]

I think they're very important because they remind us that we're, as Suzuki Roshi said, we're following this practice of Buddhism, but it's not a system of thought, it's a practice of the truth. And Buddha as a teacher is, I know Robert said this to the kids last time he talked, but how we can actually remember that we're the same as Buddha's voice, alive as Buddha's voice. Can you come closer? And I'll try. Can I what? Speak my voice, raise my voice up, okay? I'll try. You can come closer. How we can actually remember that we are all Buddha, or part of this practice of truth that Buddha taught, and take responsibility for that and actually come out and stand as true beings. Anything that helps us remember that, great.

[26:55]

I think children and plants and animals are excellent teachers of the Dharma, and I think actually that every leaf and noise of the traffic is also an excellent teacher of the Dharma, or can be if we open our ears and our hearts. So I'd like to take a look at some of these teachers this morning and honor them in their time. Last summer, I went with my husband and Jessie, our ten-year-old, to live in France with Thich Nhat Hanh for five weeks. We lived in a small community which gathers together with people from all over the world, peace workers, Peace Workers' Convention, from all over the world, which means anybody's welcome. So for one month, Plum Village community, which is where Thich Nhat Hanh practices in southern France, opens the gates to the wider world. And in fact, last summer, nineteen nations were represented,

[27:58]

people from nineteen different nations coming together to talk about practicing and raising up the teaching of Buddha's way and making it relevant in our day and age. Primary to this whole experiment, and it's kind of like a summer camp in some sense, was letting children teach and welcoming children into the circle of our lives. I loved going to the meditation hall early in the morning, not so early. We did a kind of what we call Lace Perfume Meditation, which was starting at seven o'clock in the morning, rather than five. That was pretty early. We did that so the children could join us. I liked very much seeing all the neat shoes of the young students from Europe and the United States, the kind of less neat shoes of the Vietnamese friends who were predominantly present in this retreat. And it intermingled around them, on top of them, underneath them, and all sideways,

[28:59]

the little tiny shoes of four-year-old children. It sort of, every time I went to the meditation hall, I was very moved by these little shoes, which meant the little people were inside the meditation hall. And the kids would sit up on the cushions, with their little legs tucked up here. At one point, one child was sitting very alert, and she started to kind of nod, and after about 15 minutes or so, she was snoring, full blast. And I thought it was beautiful. The other kids kind of gathered around her and put blankets around her, and she dozed off right in the middle of the whole meditation, which is basically, especially practicing in this particular environment, where people are busy working in the European world. These are people who've been through quite a lot of effort to try to free their lives, but they can gather there in France for one month. So this is their one opportunity to practice meditation together. Some of us have that opportunity on a more daily level,

[30:02]

but for them it's a real treasure. Meditation is dedicated to awareness and awakeness, being awake and alert. I loved it that there was a sleeping 4-year-old child in the middle of the room, along with an 86-year-old gentleman with a long white beard, from the old world of Vietnam, from the Asian world, meditating in the same room. Sister Phong's mother, who was an ancient woman who could no longer walk, sitting in a chair, counting her beans and meditating. Quite a nice garden there, Phong Village. I found that experience of living there, and I lived in the middle of the Vietnamese community. People who, like the Jews of the diaspora, were dispersed from their countries, trying to resettle and find their roots in an alien society, the European society, French, Swiss, German, Belgian, all of them new settlers in those countries.

[31:05]

But gathering together to take a look at what happens when the human body sits still, pays attention to the breath, and tries to enjoy life, and then carry it out into the world. I think this is a good question for all of us. When they founded the Phong Village community, the name comes from, some of you know this, but I'll tell you even, because I find it quite moving. When they originally founded the community about seven years ago, in the winter, children were invited from all the different countries that I mentioned. Primarily there were Vietnamese children transplanted to the shores of Europe, continents, the European continent. And they were invited to come in the winter and break earth, much in the same way, not quite in the same way, Each child was given a spade and a seedling of a plum tree. This Dordogne River in France is very famous for growing beautiful plums.

[32:07]

Each child was given a sapling and they planted it in mindfulness, in awareness. And this is a tree that they have returned to year after year to take care of. Last summer was a particularly auspicious summer because the trees began to fruit. Now, there's a connection there which the children understood immediately and intimately preserved. And that's the connection between planting a tree, taking care of it, sustaining it, and finding responsibility for that tree so that when it fruits, they're going to, they're planning to harvest that fruit and sell it on the French market for export. And with the money realized from that sale of fruit, the children will be able to buy to buy rice or to buy medicine for their brothers and sisters and families and generations of descendants I guess we should just say brothers and sisters, children who remain in Vietnam.

[33:09]

So, each child that plants one tree and takes the kind of graphic care of that tree also has the opportunity to see how that extends and connects with working in the wider world. But children, they're less fortunate than they are. One or two children have three or four trees, the older children. Believe me, they know which trees are theirs. They tend them. Those trees are flourishing. They're beautiful and it's a very, very marginal climate where they're grown. Quite a chalky soil. In fact, this land was only made available to the Vietnamese community because it was poor land, not suitable for grapes. So, in the vineyard world of southern France, this is a piece of marginal land. But amazingly, the trees are flourishing. They planted 1,000 trees in the first year. And then they set about building the buildings or renovating the farmships over there. For most of the year, this community lived in

[34:14]

solitude. For one month, they're open to the wider world. If you're ever in France, from the middle of July until the middle of August, you're welcome to go and visit to meditate with this group and to bring your children or to become a child again. Sometimes we have ceremonies that were dedicated to children and none of the children were there. So we had to call on the adults and do a little bit of reverse alchemy and change the staff of the children. And that was always nice to do. So I often think of those children now. Now they're harvesting fruit this summer. What, then, really is the purpose of us sitting still and considering stories like this one? Hilton Sanjean, Vicky Roche, and a lot of the other great teachers we honor say the purpose of sitting still is to sit still. We just practice dharma,

[35:17]

says Vicky Roche. We just practice dharma in taking our example from Buddha. Buddha taught us how to sit through our practice, how to act and live through our practice. That's why we sit. It's a pretty simple explanation. So here we are sitting together in a chair. So we sit, too. We just sit. But I think it goes a little bit deeper, which is to be aware of what's going on. To sit in our body is to be aware of our body and what that is in the world. So we sit alertly and with awareness. Anyone can sit. If you can't sit, you can do this quite easily by walking. You can do it by standing and looking at a tree, looking at a child, looking at a city, looking at a garbage heap. The point is to center yourself and to be aware of what's going on. When Thich Nhat Hanh first came to this community, there was a child and an orphan who came to live with him.

[36:19]

She had no parents, and until she was to be resettled, she went to live with her grandfather's mom, as she called him. One day she came in. She'd been running and playing outside, and she wanted something to drink. He gave her the end of a bottle of apple juice, which had a lot of sediment in it. She wouldn't touch it. She wanted nothing to do with it. She ran out. She was a very sensitive child. He kind of smiled and waved. She came back after about 20 minutes, and lo and behold, the glass was really clear, probably like this water that she could drink. He said, what happened to that funky apple juice? What happened to that apple juice? When he asked her to look carefully at the glass, she noticed from the bottom that the sediment had settled from the very bottom, and clarified. I love that story because it reminds me very much of what happens when we meditate. Slow down a little bit. Sit down still. Let the sediment settle.

[37:20]

We become clear, awake and alert and aware, and take responsibility for this world all around us. It's a big task right now, especially right now. Last winter, I'm going to tell a few more stories about children, and then hopefully you can ask questions or bring up anything that you want. Last summer, but last winter, the children who live at Greenville, she's about six of them, who are ten years old, who've grown up there, decided that they wanted to try to do something for kids that weren't as lucky as they were, particularly for other kids, what they wanted to do. I suggested to them that they might want to make some wreaths and sell them. Our children, having grown up at Sand Center for many years, are closet entrepreneurs. They're really interested in making wreaths. So they liked this idea a lot. People said, you are crazy. We're going to make wreaths for those kids. I sat them down and gave them all

[38:22]

materials, and showed them how to make a wreath, which takes a lot of dexterity, and care, and concentration. The idea was, they'd make these wreaths, they'd sell them, they'd raise money, and they'd donate to the other kids. Now, they've tried to make wreaths, but haven't been able to hold their concentration. If you can believe it, they spent six weeks every Thursday afternoon after school, in complete, not complete concentration, in pretty, pretty concentrated making wreaths, and each of their personalities sprang forth, and Aaron Fisher figured out exactly how many bunches there were. Did you know that fourteen and a half bunches meant that many wreaths? I never counted. And then Noah has been extremely creative. You never knew what Noah was going to do. There was this cloud of materials with Noah, because he's very wild. So they work a whole range from being very methodical to kind of wild in their creativity, and produce these extraordinary

[39:24]

specimens, which he put up on a board, said to the public, very quietly, this is a project the kids thought of to help raise money for kids who aren't as lucky as they are. If you buy the wreaths, you'll support that project. Well, they raised $700. What incredibly beautiful work they did. And the wreaths, they started taking custom orders. Their teachers made custom orders. And I thought you'd be interested to know that not only did they do that, but this was the beginning. First it was sitting still, settling. Next, their awareness went out into the world. So a project that started with a good idea, kind of noble idea, sort of a little bit too noble for my taste. It got very grounded after a while, because it was $700 that they didn't have before, and so they wanted to know where it was going. So they went deeper. And they began to engage. And they looked at all the possible projects that were available to them. First they chose to give

[40:26]

a group of homeless children. Children who had been abandoned. They had a shelter in Marin County. Not only did they give the money to them, they went to the shelter. They met the kids. They brought $110. This was their first week's work. And they brought a wreath. One of the wreaths that hadn't sold. They brought. And they had a whole tour of the school. Not only did they see the school and meet the kids, they also went to a Christmas party that was for the children. So they really engaged with these children and found out who they were, where they lived, invited them to Green Belch. It was a very good experience. They also worked for two weeks to raise enough money to support one of these families that I mentioned, who were living in Vietnam, of course, and children. So that took two weeks' work. One of the children who lives in Green Belch, her mother had just gone through a rather grueling battle with breast cancer. Cancer was in her life. The children were aware that she was one of the children that grew up with them

[41:27]

and worked with them. So they donated another week's work. It was about $115 to the cancer support group that helped with other people that we know are running to help children learn about cancer and how to deal with cancer in their life. They also donated to a few other projects. It was amazing. By the end of the winter, Christmas time came up. They really engaged in the life of the world. They were leading me. They were pulling me along in these different projects. And I think a lot of you know about this. They wrote an article. The kids themselves wrote this article, which they dictated to me. I wrote them. It was in the Wind Bell, another article in the Buddhist Peace Fellowship Journal, because they wanted to tell people about what they've done. They thought it would encourage other people to do similar work. It's pretty easy to do. Anyway,

[42:28]

they have a huge empathy. When my son was very little, 18 months old, he broke his leg. He had a little cast in his foot. These same kids that were making wreaths with him, growing up with him, they were just learning to walk and negotiate the upright world. One day, all of his friends appeared at our house wearing little tin cans on their feet. So they were all limping. It's like, what's the empathetic we need of our lives? It's so strong. They all, during the time Jesse had the broken leg, they wore the tin cans on their feet so that they could also be slowed down with him. You know what I mean? It was real simple. They just stuck their foot in an empty number 10 can of tomato sauce and clumped around. They loved it. After they got tired of it, they kicked it off and became regular able-bodied kids. I bring it up because we have this connection with the world. Sometimes we forget which is an empathetic connection. It comes from slowing down and looking at everyone together.

[43:32]

You can feel it and carry it out. Life is real, not a ghost. Said the 11-year-old boy who came to learn how to treat the greenhouse. It's real, it's not a ghost. There's so many, I'm sure you could all tell a story similar to this of this kind of awareness that goes beyond imitation. I think there's some humor in it too. Last summer when we were at Plum Village, we spent some time writing or composing gathas or short verses that would help us remember our connection with everyone in the world. My son chose to go home early. He was having kind of a hard time being away from the family. He missed his phone. He was trying to make up his mind that this was really what the case was. He was lonesome. He went back to the United States a little early. He finished the entire time in Plum Village before he came home.

[44:33]

He wrote a little poem, which I thought was great. I wrote it today on YouTube. Soaring over the Atlantic Ocean, I think of all the people who wish they could go home one day. For him, living there, he realized that there were lots of people who didn't have the freedom that he had. Anyway, he read this to all the children that were in there. In fact, all of them can't go home when he could, because home for many of them would be at home. He also wrote another one which I thought was pretty good. The other extremely says, waking my kid at 7 o'clock in the morning is like trying to move a big boulder. Lest we get too grandiose. There's probably a chance just to experiment how to actually bring this field back a little bit more alive. I think the children will be

[45:34]

very involved in that day. If you can, we'd love to have you come. I'm going to close with one more story about children who grew up at Greenwich many years ago who are now teenagers. This year, to our surprise, they founded a group. A lot of them are boys. They founded a group to look at what their commitment would be to military service, if at all. This was a real surprise. It was a group of their peers. They wanted to look at what it means to be a conscientious objector. What it means to serve in all the different ways you can. They spent a year doing this. Taking a look at it. And they drew, to our real surprise, they drew quite heavily on their childhood experiences of living in concentration camps. Observing their parents sitting still at dawn in their living rooms or in their bedrooms, wherever they were. This had some effect on the children which we hadn't actually

[46:34]

accounted for. We began to call in our own backyard and said they finally had a final meeting a couple of months ago, because a lot of them were graduating from high school and they were going out into the world. At the end of the meeting, one of the girls who helped organize the group, named Erica, asked for a few minutes of silence to remember one of their best friends who'd been in the group for years and chosen to enlist in the military, to enlist in the Air Force. Most of them didn't take that, didn't make that choice. They're looking at alternate service. They're looking at what they can do to engage, yes, but maybe not in the way that their friend chose. So they took a few minutes of silence and sat together, very hard for them to do, and remembered their friend. Anyway, I think that these are all modern stories of the lives of Buddha day by day. Fresh stories every minute.

[47:36]

The ancient stories are fine, but there are new ones every day. And a place like Dantanen is one of many places where we can sit still together and listen to the teaching that comes from one of these. Is there anything you want to bring up? I'm sure you all have stories. We also always leave a lot of time for question and answer in a less formal atmosphere in the back of the dining room if you prefer.

[48:10]

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