This is a big holiday weekend with Passover starting on Friday night and today is Easter Sunday. So millions of people all over the world are celebrating these very important holidays of the year. And so we join with everyone in celebrating in our own way by coming out to Green Gulch for a Sunday morning talk. In that chant that we just chanted, which is the verse for opening a sutra or beginning a study, beginning a lecture, it's helpful to clear your mind and make it ready for listening

[01:05]

to whatever the words are going to be. And it says at the end, I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. And the Tathagata, that's a Sanskrit word which means the thus come one. It's a name given to the Buddha. Or it also means suchness, Tathagata. So, I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Now Shakyamuni Buddha, before he spoke anything, always had three considerations before he spoke, even before he spoke one word. And those three considerations were one, whether what he had to say was true, and the second was whether it was a benefit.

[02:06]

And then after considering whether it was true or whether it was a benefit, the third consideration was the timing, whether this was the time to say it. And, so with that in mind, I offer this lecture. We recently finished a month-long practice event called the Tokubetsu Sesshin, a special sesshin or special intensive training time that was held at Green Gulch, and many people were here from all over the world, Europe and all over the United States and lots of people from Japan. We learned a lot from each other.

[03:08]

I think we shared back and forth. The people from Japan taught us many ceremonies and rituals, and they marked the month-long calendar with various ceremonies that came at each certain days of the month that they do regularly that we don't do. And they also learned from us a lot of things that we do are very different. For example, having families and children who live at the temple was very unusual for them, or having women who are very involved in practice also be mothers and take care of children. That was amazing to them. That model is not operative in Japan, and they thought that they would bring some of

[04:09]

these things back. And last week we had our annual Buddha's birthday ceremony. Many of you, I think, came to that. And that's our kind of annual rite of spring that we have at Green Gulch. And they watched that and took pictures of the big masks, and all these people were out here with balloons, and I think that was kind of an unusual event for them. So we share back and forth, and there were many wonderful teachers who spoke here. One person in particular named Narasaki Roshi, who is in his 70s, I think he's 75, and he's about 4'10 in height, and a very powerful person, very condensed. And I enjoyed his lectures quite a bit.

[05:13]

So the importance of having these rites, a rite comes from the word ritu, which means order, and it's associated with ordain and ritual. These rites are what mark the difference between one day and another, or one hour of the day and another, certain rites, certain ceremonies. Now some people are more inclined to mark these kinds of changes in the year, and other people forget their birthday, forget anniversaries, it's all the same. You have to kind of say, today is Halloween, you know, let's do something. For other people, it comes naturally, they want to mark the seasons and mark the days. So the rites of spring, our Buddhist birthday pageant, we do it the same way pretty much

[06:23]

every year, and people count on it. There's something settled and wonderful about it being the same every year. That's this kind of order, brings a kind of order into our lives. Recently at a residence meeting out at Green Gulch, we were talking about wanting to buy organic, more organic foods, and to eat in season. Because when springtime comes around, you know, we've lost the sense of what it's like to see, in many cases, we've lost what it's like to see those first green things come up out of the ground that get gathered to make, there's a wonderful recipe for a spring tonic soup with all the new spring vegetables, and you make a wonderful, and how that must have tasted to people who'd been eating dried fruits and root vegetables all winter, and

[07:25]

then the first green comes up and you make it into a delicious soup, like medicine, a tonic, spring tonic soup. But we're so used to going to a market or a supermarket and seeing everything on the shelves, pretty much, where you can get strawberries any time of the year, you can get peas any time of the year. So when springtime comes around, it may not be, you may not receive that thrill of the first green things. So in talking about this, to try and eat in season and go without the rest of the year, you don't have peaches and nectarines, even if they're coming from some warm country, to actually live simply enough so that you eat in season.

[08:27]

And then when that season comes around, when the apples come in, it's a wonderful, it's a thrill. And we've lost this, it's a kind of aliveness that you have when you're living simply like that, but we've, in many cases, lost this. And, you know, people don't want to eat rutabagas all winter, they want to have a variety, so we're used to this, and it's hard to simplify our lives. So this ability to have almost whatever we want that we have in our country, for many people, I'm not saying for everyone, but for many of us, to be able to go to a supermarket and choose whatever you want, whenever you want it, things from all over, this is a kind of, this can kind of deaden our sensibilities of what it's like to go without, what it's

[09:27]

like to have a real appetite for rhubarb, something you haven't had for a whole year, and it only is a short season, and you make it into pie or something. This brings a kind of vibrancy to our life that gets deadened by having whatever we want around us whenever we want it. And this realm, you might call it a deva realm. Now, in Buddhism, you know, there's a mythological or psychological way of talking about different states of mind, mind and body, these different realms, the six realms, and they include the heavenly realms or the deva realms, the realm of aggressive kind of beings, the asura, realm of the asuras. Then there's the hungry ghosts, which are kind of greedy, wanting, never satisfied kind

[10:32]

of state, animal realm, which is characterized by fear, hell realms, which is characterized by lots of pain and anguish, and then the human realm, which is characterized by suffering, but in balance, it's not so terrible that you can't do anything, but you're not so comfortable that you don't have a sense of other people and other beings. So the danger of the deva realm or the heavenly realm of having lots of things, anything you want whenever you want it, this is a kind of hindrance because what happens is one loses touch with other people, you actually, because you're not suffering yourself, because you're not in a difficult situation or feeling your own suffering, it's hard to have compassion or suffering with other beings, and you might, it's like their problem, or you just, you

[11:42]

don't have a sense of the suffering of other beings and wanting to help other beings. I have an example of this, a person came to talk with me, kind of a middle-aged man who had embezzled from his employer when he was a younger man, and he was describing to me what it was like, he was getting away with this activity, and he felt kind of untouchable, like he wasn't going to get caught, he was really doing it in a smart way, and he had all this power, he had power over his employer and the other workers who weren't figuring it out, and he didn't even consider it as being stealing necessarily, it wasn't stealing, it was more power and being untouchable and nobody can stop me kind of feeling, almost

[12:47]

a trance-like state of believing that he was untouchable, until the day when he was caught and then he plunged from this kind of deva realm, this heavenly realm of nothing can touch me, immediately down into the hell realms of terrible anguish and suffering due to society's, what society will do when this kind of activity is uncovered. But even while he was doing it, he had one kind of twinge that, gee, this probably isn't so helpful for my employer, gee, because he liked his employer, but then he kind of pushed that aside and went back to this activity. But from this heavenly realm one plunges into the hell realm, that's on the wheel of life where these are depicted iconographically, you go from the heavenly realm down right

[13:52]

into hell realms. So we often yearn for being in these heavenly realms, wanting perfect beauty and wealth and intelligence, to be the smartest thing going, and these are actually in Buddhism thought of as hindrances. Great beauty, great wealth, great intelligence are seen as difficulties in practicing the way, because of this tendency to be separated from other beings and not feel the same things other people feel, not understand the struggle someone has in trying to understand the teaching, or if you have great intelligence you kind of get the nuances and what someone's driving

[14:53]

at and it's all very easy. And great beauty, you're often set aside and treated differently and catered to and not taken seriously in many cases, given preferential treatment way before and praise and so forth way before it's time. And great wealth, similar to this deva realm, to not feel what it's like to have to have to work. I know people who don't have to work and their biggest problem is what to do with their time. What are they going to do all day? There's nothing they have to do. So these are seen as hindrances rather than something one would strive after. And this goes against kind of the usual way that society puts forth what it is that's

[15:55]

what we should seek after. What is the best things to seek after? Great wealth. What is that bumper sticker you can never be too rich or too thin? So this is kind of our culture's tendency to point to those things as what to go after. So in Buddhism, or not necessarily in Buddhism, but in life, true beauty, true beauty is from the inside. Now you know, you've been told this, right, for a long time, but I came across a quote from Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln, supposedly, Abraham Lincoln said, after age 40, we're all responsible for our own looks. Now how I took that was, you know, we're born into this world and we have certain parents

[17:00]

and we're dressed a certain way and somebody combs our hair and we look a certain way. It doesn't have so much to do with us. But through our own actions and our own thinking and our own heart, over the years we begin to take on our own, the fruits of our own actions begin to show up. So who we are is totally revealed. It's not a hidden thing at all. In fact, if you think about that, that our face and body show exactly to the world who we are after 40, you know, it takes a while. It's embarrassing, you know, it's kind of frightening, frightening and embarrassing to think that we're that revealed, you know. So after 40 we have, we, it's our own responsibility how we look. And I think you probably know people who over the years, you know, they may be very bitter

[18:04]

people and their face begins to take on that look, you know, until, you may not have known it as a younger person, but later on you can see it, you can read it. In the 75 list of elements or dharmas, there's one element called avijñapti-rupa, which is the subtle form, and it's a material, it's in the material realm. These are the kind of traditional list of experience, human experience, divided into these 75 elements or dharmas. And 10, 11 of them are in the material realm. They're the eye organ, the capacity to see and hear and so forth, and hearables and seeables and smellables. And then the 11th one is avijñapti-rupa, which is subtle, subtle material realm, which is the effect that your thinking and actions have on your material body and mind

[19:12]

that show up, you know, later on. So Abraham Lincoln was, he knew about avijñapti-rupa, I guess. Also the effects of the, not necessarily one's anger or bitterness or those kinds of actions, but also receiving the precepts or being ordained, these also have subtle effects that will show up later on physically, materially. So these hindrances that are mistaken for things to seek after separate us, great wealth and great intelligence, great beauty, these separate us from the human realm, and in the human realm we suffer and we know the suffering of others, we can feel the suffering of others,

[20:13]

and we can generate a feeling of wanting to help others. Now this Zen Master I mentioned, Narasaki Roshi, gave a series of talks, and one of them he really spoke about the kind of essence of Buddhist practice, which is that we are not separate. Buddha or the Buddha mind and sentient beings are not separate. They are one thing. This is one of the main things he talked about. And the second thing he talked about was when this is understood, or along with the practice and understanding and study of this comes, and Rev. Anderson mentioned this last week, I guess, when he spoke. It was very striking. He talked about the burning heart of eagerness to help sentient beings. So this, along with this understanding of not being separate,

[21:16]

comes naturally a desire and eagerness to help other beings. And this is in the human realm that this arises. Understanding the suffering of other beings and wanting to help them. And this doesn't depend on one's capacities, or one's great or lesser capacities. What it depends on is one doing one's best to help. You don't have to be some very accomplished person. You just do your best with pure heart. So I have a story that I wanted to tell you, that I've been wanting to tell for a long time. And finally this seems like, in terms of the three considerations, this seems like the time is right. I've had it on a list of things to talk about in lecture at some point,

[22:22]

and today is the day. I've been having this difficulty with my eyes. I have a kind of chronic difficulty with my eyelids getting red and all. And the latest treatment is to put a warm washcloth on my eyes and then scrub my eyelids with baby shampoo. And while I've been doing this, I can't help remembering all the testing that has been done on mostly bunnies, mostly rabbits, who don't tear, their eyes don't tear. And so they use rabbits to test what might be irritating to the human eye. So every time I do this, I'm very grateful to this Johnson's Baby Shampoo, which, remember that commercial, Oh baby, baby, there'll be no more tears with Johnson's Baby Shampoo. Well, now I get to use it, and it's true, there are no more tears. But I have tears when I remember these bunnies, these bunny rabbits.

[23:25]

So this is a story about a wonderful rabbit that is from the book Watership Down, which probably many, many of you have read. It was a bestseller for a long time, written by Richard Adams. And this is the story about the rabbit. It was kind of a mythical rabbit named El O'Ryra. How many of you have read Watership Down? So there are many stories in the book about El O'Ryra, and this is just one. So El O'Ryra is a little bit like a coyote figure. He tricked King Dyson and took his lettuces, and this really annoyed the king, and he vowed that he would get back at El O'Ryra and his people. And he captured one of El O'Ryra's friends, Rab Scuttle, and El O'Ryra figured out a way to dig him out. He tunneled in and got him and took him away.

[24:26]

And King Dyson said, That does it. I'm going to get El O'Ryra. And so he took his whole army over to where the warren was and placed army soldiers at all the different holes so that rabbits could not get in or out of the holes. They could maybe get out, snatch a handful, a mouthful of grass, and get back in. But the soldiers might be there. They might get killed if they did this. And El O'Ryra tried to run out and grab grass and bring it back in, but pretty soon the people, El O'Ryra's people, began to get very weak and began to starve because they didn't have enough food. And El O'Ryra didn't know what to do, and he wanted to help them very much, and he thought and thought and decided he would do anything to help his people as the days went by. He would do anything. So he thought, I'd even make a bargain. I'd even make a deal with the black rabbit of Inle.

[25:28]

And he decided, that's what I'm going to do. And he called the people together and he said, I'm going to go to the black rabbit of Inle. If anybody has power, the black rabbit of Inle does to help save my people. So he told them he was going to escape and they would make a commotion at some of the holes and draw off the king's men. And that's what they did, and these rabbits fought very hard and several of them lost their lives. But it drew the attention of King Dyson's men and El O'Ryra scooted out the back with Rapscuttle along with him and out and down the ditch and away he went. And he went a long, long way, and it was nighttime, and he went farther than anybody had ever gone before. And they came to a place where there was no grass, it was just rocky, and it was dark and cold, and they didn't know where they were.

[26:31]

And then they heard a voice saying, What are you doing here, El O'Ryra? And right next to him there was a rock, what he thought was a rock, but it was the black rabbit of Inle as cold as a stone and as still as lichen. And he got very afraid and jumped on into this hole, but the black rabbit of Inle was right there too. And he said, Why have you come here, El O'Ryra? El O'Ryra said, I've come to give my life in exchange for my people. And the black rabbit of Inle said, Oh, bargains, bargains, bargains. There isn't a day that goes by where there's some mother who's saying, Take my life and spare my kitten's life, or some chief, some officer is saying, Please take my life and let my chief get well from his wounds. Bargains, bargains, bargains. And El O'Ryra said, Please, please take my life.

[27:33]

My people are starving. And the black rabbit of Inle said, You know, there's nothing I can really do for you, El O'Ryra. But El O'Ryra, he said, Why don't you have something to eat? El O'Ryra knew that if he ate something there, the black rabbit of Inle would understand his thoughts, could read his thoughts, and would know he was trying to trick him some way. So he wouldn't eat anything. But he said, Well, maybe we can play Bobstones, which is kind of a gambling game. And El O'Ryra said, Well, let's do that. Okay, he could play Bobstones just about as well as any rabbit could. So he said, All right, I'll play, and if I win, you take my life in exchange for my people's life. And the black rabbit of Inle said, And if you lose, I'll take your whiskers and your tail. And then they began to play Bobstones, and the black rabbit of Inle was a magnificent player of Bobstones, and he won. And so El O'Ryra was taken away,

[28:35]

and they took off his whiskers and his tail. And he felt terrible, but he wasn't going to leave. He was free to go at any moment, but the black rabbit couldn't keep him there against his will, but he didn't want to leave. Then they played again, and this time the black rabbit of Inle said, If you lose, I'll take your ears. And he said, All right, we'll do that. And the game this time was not Bobstones, but who could tell the scariest story. The black rabbit of Inle was first, and he told such a horrible, terrible, terrifying story that El O'Ryra and Rab Scuttle were just huddled in the corner, they couldn't bear it, and afterwards El O'Ryra felt his story wasn't anything, he couldn't tell it. So they took El O'Ryra away and cut off his ears. Well, meanwhile, Rab Scuttle went to go get food from outside of that place, and also some dock leaves,

[29:38]

those green long leaves, to put in place of his ears. And El O'Ryra heard these people talking, and he went out to where they were, out by these different pits, and he said, What are these places? And they said, Oh, these are where the worst things for rabbits are, mange and sicknesses, and in this pit over here is where the white blindness, the illness called the white blindness is, and if you get the white blindness, not even the enemies will touch you, you just die out in the fields, and enemies will just leave you alone. And El O'Ryra thought, Ah, now I know what to do. And when they weren't looking, he jumped into that pit, he plunged himself into that pit of the white blindness, and he stayed in there, and they couldn't get him out. And he stayed in there as long as he possibly could, thinking, I think now I'm probably infected with the white blindness. And I'm going to leave and go to King Dyson's army,

[30:41]

and that's how I'll save my people. I wonder how long it's going to take for the illness to come on. You know, Rabscuttle, you better stay, told him to stay far away from him, and he started to leave, because he could have left at any moment. He started to head back for his warren, and as he was going along, he didn't have whiskers or tail or ears, and he was going along towards his warren, and he heard a voice say, Where are you going, El O'Ryra? A very quiet voice, and it was the black rabbit of Inle. He said, I'm going home. You said I could leave whenever I wanted to. I'm going home. I'm going to destroy the king's army and save my people. And the black rabbit said, El O'Ryra, do you know how the white blindness, he told him, I went into the pit, and I have the white blindness. I'm going to infect the army. He said, El O'Ryra, do you know how the sickness,

[31:42]

the white blindness is spread from rabbit to rabbit? And El O'Ryra stood still. He didn't know. He didn't say anything. The black rabbit said, The white blindness is spread by fleas that live in the ears of rabbits and jump from one rabbit to another. And you have no ears, El O'Ryra. You only have dock leaves, and there's no fleas that will live in dock leaves. And at this point, El O'Ryra fell to the ground. He lost all his strength at that point and fell to the ground, tried to move, but he couldn't, helpless, knowing that he had failed. And at that point, the black rabbit of Inle said, This is no place for a rabbit like you, El O'Ryra. This is a cold warren, and you are a rabbit with a brave heart

[32:42]

and a brave, warm heart and spirit. You're a nuisance to me. You go home. I'll save your people for you. And don't you dare ask me when it's going to happen, because there's no time down here, so it doesn't matter anyway, and they're already saved. And El O'Ryra left and went back, and there's more adventures of El O'Ryra when he gets home. So this warm heart, this burning heart, burning with eagerness to help other beings, this, I felt, is the heart that Narasaki Roshi was talking about. And it doesn't take great capacity. It takes doing the best you can, just doing the best you can in your circumstances. And you don't have to be perfect and wonderful intelligence.

[33:45]

You know, Moses, I just was reminded of, Moses had a speech impediment. Don't you think that's great? Can't you just hear him up on the mountain, you know? So it doesn't, you don't, perfection is not what's necessary here. We're talking about purity of heart, and purity of heart includes, even with your impure trying, you know, that may miss and may fail, even with that, your purity of heart will come through. So the bind of the Buddha mind and sentient beings is not different. This is one of the, this is the main teaching of Buddhism. And yet, unless we practice, we can't access this. Unless we study and practice, study, I mean full study, all-inclusive study of body and mind,

[34:49]

not just reading texts or something. Unless we practice this, we can't access this realization that we are already Buddha, that Buddha and sentient beings are not different. So, talking about it, you know, misses the mark, really. The word Tathagata, which means the thus come one, the thus come one is suchness. And if you start to talk about suchness, you pretty much miss the mark. How can you talk about suchness? And yet, we say something if the time is right. And if it's true, if we feel it's true and of benefit, and the time is right, we give it a go, you know.

[35:51]

You say something. But speaking about it misses, actually misses the mark. And this is the way we are, kind of always missing the mark with true heart, with brave spirit. You miss the mark. And when we're in the human realm, the rabbit realm, we feel for our people who are starving. We feel this. We want to try and help. Because we're not separate from them, we're interdependent. We feel the rabbit, the absence of tears of the rabbit. So I want to close with a story that illustrates this.

[36:58]

This is something I heard over the radio NPR when I was driving along. I think it was St. Patrick's Day, and there was a program of Irish tenors who were singing beautiful, beautiful, beautiful voices, and they sang songs that I had heard before, but this time they really came in with their full force, like the song Danny Boy, Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling. And I realized it was the song of a young man who was being called to war. I never really thought about it. I thought it was his girlfriend was saying he was leaving, but no, it's this young man, probably full of energy and life, and the pipes are calling, and they're bringing him away, and this sorrowful feeling of a mother for her son being called off to war. And following that was a contemporary song written by the man who sang the song himself, I believe.

[38:00]

No, it was someone else who wrote it. He just sang it, and the name of the song was Goodbye Love, There's No One Leaving, and it was written on the occasion of this man bringing his mother to a nursing home. His mother had Alzheimer's disease, and it got to the point where he just couldn't take care of her any longer. He and his sister, she couldn't be tracked, and she was going to hurt herself or do something that would cause harm to herself or others, so they finally decided she had to go to a nursing home. And when he brought her there, he was holding her hand, and they were waiting in the waiting room, and he could feel all the fear and anxiety in her hand. She didn't exactly know what was happening, but he could feel how fearful she was, and he hated to leave her there. He didn't want to leave her, but he had to leave her there. And while he was holding her hand, he remembered when he had been a little boy

[39:01]

and his mother had taken him to school, the first day of school, and he had been very afraid and holding tight to her hand, and she had brought him up to the steps of the school and assured him and left him there. And when she left him, she said, Good-bye, love, there's no one leaving. So he remembered that as he held his mother's hand, leaving her, Good-bye, love, there's no one leaving. And the song is very, very beautiful. It's a tenor voice. So this understanding, Good-bye, love, there's no one leaving, is the understanding of how we are all connected and how we love each other so much, and this connection, the pain of the connection, the point at which we connect is the point at which we're separated,

[40:03]

and there's pain there, and yet the truth of it is that we are connected and there's no one leaving. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Hi, Norman, is that you? Hi. Is there anything anyone would like to talk about or ask about or bring up? You know what I'd really love to do today is hear everybody's name. I don't know if you know each other or not, but I see many of you every week, and I can't put the names and the faces together.

[41:06]

Would that be all right? Just everyone say the name. Want to start? Eric. Carrie. Caroline. Cynthia. Lisa. Sally. Collette. Stella. Winston. Ann. Eric. Jan. Laura. Priscilla. Andrea. Luna. Nancy. Andrew. Norman. Brian. Virginia. Travis. David. Kathy. Maureen. Sally. Renee. Elena. Fred. Barbara. Jennifer. Elizabeth. Is everybody on the floor? Oh, yeah, go ahead. I'm Elizabeth. Shay. Hi. Virginia. Toga. Marion. Grant. Andrea. Thank you.

[42:08]

I really appreciate that. Thank you very much. Now, did you know each other? Some of you knew each other? So... Yeah, we might get to know each other's names. We could do that every week. I'm nervous. Would anyone like... Yes. At the end, I was thinking about or started to think about what you were talking about. I don't think I completely got it about me leaving and not... Or the goodbye love, no one's leaving. Is that what it was exactly? And it's about separation and pain and that this isn't about the point, but there's a point where the separation... And that's where I didn't buy it, but I would like to know what that means. Okay. Well, what I was trying to bring up is that the places that we touch other people,

[43:26]

I suppose physically, mentally, and emotionally, I guess, in all ways, are also the places that we are separated at the same time. If we can touch, then we can separate. I mean, if you can't touch, it's because it's already... Like I can't touch my nose with my nose because it's already being itself, you know, totally. So then the touching is the bad, you get the booby traps for touching. I thought the touching, you got the reward for the... Well, the booby traps? Well, that's what I'm trying to say. It has this quality of both, you know. It's... Our life, our human life includes this kind of recognition of...

[44:28]

One of the most painful things we have in our life is the belief and the recognition that we're separate from others. And so the place where we come together is the place where we're also separated. Now... Say about the booby price again? Well, I thought in the first part, you know, the rabbit with the fiery heart, and the good heart and all that, I thought he gets the price for wanting to touch and wanting to save and wanting all that. But then it sounds like if you're at the point where you're feeling the pain out of the touching, then that means it isn't your nose to you. There is a separation there. When you said he got the prize, what do you see as the prize he got? He told a story about it. Oh, the prize was that he was an example? Yeah, he celebrated as an example and a model.

[45:30]

I made a difference in his life. And what do you think that El Raiwa's prize was for himself? I mean, he didn't know I told the story about him. Do you think that he received something? What did he... I think you were saying that there are some people or beings who are just like that, who do have as their method of expression of life to be that way, to do that. He didn't want it. What he received, if you look at the story, is more pain. He got, well, first of all, his whiskers and his tail. And for a rabbit, when he was going back with the white blindness, he kept bumping into things because he had no whiskers. And the whiskers for a rabbit are like antennae, you know. So he was in a lot of pain, actually.

[46:31]

You know, it's the irony, you might say, irony, is... See, El Raiwa I think of as Bodhisattva, and Bodhisattva is enlightenment being. Excuse me, I have to cough here. Bodhisattva is a being who puts on the armor. It's called the armor. Anyway, that's the image. The armor of spaghetti is your whiskers cut off and your tail and then your ears, you know. And then your whole... He, at the end, you know, when he plunged into that hole, he was willing to even rot, you know, because that's what that disease, the white blindness, would do. Your whole body would just rot. So he just received more. He had the capacity to receive more and [...] more pain, you know. So, you know, is that a prize? Is that... What is that, you know?

[47:35]

It's actually... That's one of the things about taking up the Bodhisattva vow or the Bodhisattva way of life is, you know, you find that your heart is often very tight and closed and actually your posture, your physical posture, might even be like this. You see people sitting like this and they're just really protecting this area here. And if you adjust their back, you know, you run your hand down and you go like this, it's like they burst into tears. It's like even to just open themselves that much, like a quarter of an inch or half an inch to open, what it feels like is such pain, emotional and physical pain, too, in there. So for the Bodhisattva to put on the armor, you open and open and open. You just open and there's no end to the opening. But it's not like you then get to be kind of above it all or something.

[48:41]

It's you just get more... You go into the... You get white blindness. You know, you go into the pit. So there's this... But the funny thing is about it is that it's like that's the only thing you want to do. It's like to not help his people, to not do what he could, that would have been even worse. To let it just happen, to let them starve and have him sit there and starve with them, which might have been a less painful situation than white blindness or some other kind of thing, would have been worse because of this feeling of connectedness, to not honor that thoroughly with your whole body and mind. So this point at which... Let's see if I can do this again. The point at which you feel the connection to people is also... It's like we, because of our apparatus of our psychological and physical apparatus,

[49:45]

we do see things outside of ourselves. I do see you sitting over there and you are apart from me, right? You're going to go home and I'm going to do something else today. And yet, that's a mistake. And the belief in that, this is the sin of Buddhism. If there is such a thing as sin in Buddhism, it's the belief that we're separate. And there's pain in that belief of our separateness. And there's also pain, sorry to say, but in acting on the knowledge that... And you don't even have to act on the knowledge that. It arises that you have to do something for those rabbits. You didn't have to think about it. It just arises. So this is kind of the quality of our life.

[50:46]

It's like that. It has this... It has that in it. And yet, that's what makes everything so precious. That's what makes... If you're close to that, if you're close to that, then having tea with your mother or whatever it is, is very precious. And the first vegetable of the spring is very precious. And everything has its own life that comes forward to you. So it's within that context. I don't know. Did that... No, that's great. Thank you. I just want to follow up on that. Because I was listening to your talk today, and I thought it was very moving. And I still carry in my mind a movie that I saw last night called The Priest.

[51:48]

I hate to give away the plot to anybody, but it's just... It's just very much in my mind. It's about this young priest who lives in this poor neighborhood. And as the plot goes on, he hears this confession from a 14-year-old girl about the fact that she's been repeatedly molested by her father, and that her mother is totally unaware of this. And it's obvious that this is destroying the girl, and she refuses to have the priest reveal this information to anybody. So he tries to confront the father, and the father just totally laughs at him and says that he can't do anything to stop him, that he revels in having this power over this girl, and not that the priest can't break the vows of revealing this information in a confession. So the priest just watches this girl. She's in some class and she gets progressively more destroyed by this incident.

[52:50]

And eventually the father gets discovered, and she's removed from him. But the other plot is that the priest happens to be gay, and he's struggling with his own experiences with being in love with this man, and being sexual about it, and struggling with being a Catholic priest. And he gets found out, and he gets shamed, and publicly shamed. It's in a newspaper, and half the congregation leaves the church, and the church ridicules him. And at the end of the movie, there's this one scene where he is giving Mass, and half the congregation has walked out, and he's just receiving all this scorn and abuse. And the girl is in an incredibly moving scene. The girl is in the congregation, and she just walks up to him, and he sees her.

[53:52]

A large part of the movie is showing just how completely heartbroken he is about seeing this girl, and being helpless to prevent what's happening to her. And there's just this scene where he's wonderfully active, where he sees her, and because of all this shame, and pain, and humiliation, and doubt, and stuff he's gone through, he's able to see her pain, and to feel just complete compassion, and love, and sympathy for her. And likewise, her for him, because of her sense of being abused, and broken, and helpless against somebody who's totally evil. She's able to just see his pain, and feel great compassion for him too. And it ends with him breaking down crying, and she just holding him. And it was... I mean, I still carry that... I'm sorry, in the moment, since you didn't move yet, because I just blew the plot for them. But it was one of the most moving scenes I've ever seen.

[54:57]

Faithfully acted about the human condition. And it just totally walked into what you were saying today. It's just like, if you feel that pain, if you drag down that pain, it's horrible. Nobody wants to feel that pain, like these two incidents that happened. But if you get to that space, the possibility is, like you said, to be open to other people, in a way that you could never have achieved, outside of experiencing that pain. It was an incredibly gripping movie, and I'm still carrying it around in my mind, what that means in our lives. And how we can take our pain, and use it in a way to express compassion for others in their pain. And how you have to experience that pain first, before you can have that compassion for others. Well said. Well said. Thank you. Even though I did blow the plot, it still remains a movie. It's a wonderful movie. I just said something that's been kind of bothering me about...

[56:02]

The rabbit didn't seem to do anything. He went in and he punished himself with all this pain and despair, and he never really punished anything. Elira didn't? Yeah. It seems like it was sort of a unnecessary kind of... I tried to help somebody, but in a way he didn't do anything. He just tortured himself. Well, I see it a little bit different, so I'll just say how I see it. At the end there, he tried to... The black rabbit of Inle was like all powerful, and fear and darkness, it's this dark figure from the underworld, and he's down in the underworld where nothing's alive, really, with the black rabbit of Inle. So he tries, but he's really all powerful, so he tries to beat him at bobstones, and then he tries to tell the better story, and it's like he has no power there, really, except for his heart, his brave heart. So he loses, and he loses all these things,

[57:07]

but at the end, even when he's on his way back without his whiskers, he's on his way back kind of bumping into things, thinking he's carrying this disease that will save. And at that point, the black rabbit of Inle says quietly, Where are you going, Elorira? It's like the black rabbit of Inle is moved by this rabbit's effort. Even though he failed, he was just like failed, failed, failed, and still he kept trying something. So at the end, the only thing that really saved his people was the fact that he was willing to sacrifice everything to throw himself into the pit of the white blindness, which the black rabbit of Inle, I don't think he'd ever seen such a heart as this. And that's when he said, And you don't even have ears to carry the disease. You can't even do that. You failed again. And at that point, when Elorira just, he kind of lost it there.

[58:10]

He just sunk to the ground. That's when the black rabbit of Inle was moved to actually do what he could have done like that. He could have saved the people. So he did save his people. It was through his efforts that looked like failing. It looks like failing over and over, one continuous mistake. But it's that kind of effort that when we see it, and recognize it, it's like it can change your life. It can change your life. What do you think? I just have this vision of nobody ever going, Ah, okay, you tried so hard. To you? Well, that may be so. That may be so that there's no one who sees it,

[59:11]

but the black rabbit of Inle will see it, you know. It's, if one does it in order to get patted on the back, like, boy, that was really, really valorous, you know. You were, never seen such valor. It's like if you're doing it in hopes that you'll hear this praise coming over you, like, honey, it's, that's not a pure heart. That's actually fame and gain. It has to be fame and gain, looking for fame and gain. That's the kind of Buddhist, if you sit zazen for fame and gain, or to get anything, to get goodies, it's, you're going away from it. You sit for the sake of sitting, that's all. So, so, and that's, and to live your life in that way with not necessarily, just tracelessly doing the best, your absolute best that you can, whatever that is, for the circumstances.

[60:12]

That's enough. And that's, it doesn't matter if anybody notices it or not, because the Buddha notices, or, you know, your true heart knows, and it will hit the mark. Speaking of not hitting the mark, that will hit the mark. Una? When you talk about that, it made me think of the vows of the Bodhisattva, and I wondered if that's, I mean, when I say those vows, like after the lecture, it feels like they're so, I mean, innumerable, and yet I'll do them anyway. So I wondered if that's related, or what that, like, is pure effort. I think they're exactly related. You know, the Bodhisattva vows that we recite, Beings are numberless, I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to put an end to them. Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them.

[61:15]

The Buddha way is unsurpassable, I vow to attain it, or enter it. So here you have these vows that, grammatically speaking, are impossible. Innumerable, I vow to do it, you know. I mean, it doesn't, syntactically or whatever, it's just, they're non-secret. It's oxymoronic or something. Anyway, you put these two things together and it's impossible. Now, but if you said, and that's why they're the Bodhisattva vows, because they are impossible, and you're going to do it anyway. If you said, let's see, Beings are about three billion in the world now, let's see, and there's about one a minute, I vow to save, you know. Or delusions, you count up my delusions, they're, I got about a hundred, I vow to put an end to them. It's like, it's not big enough. It can't contain your spirit, actually, your spirit of this burning heart. It can't, to actually put a number on it, or a, so to acknowledge that,

[62:15]

we say innumerable, you know, inexhaustible. That's who you are, that's really who you are. That's closer to it than, you know, Beings are, and trying to make it finite. But then, and actually to make, you know that song, to dream the impossible dream, da-da-da-da, what's that song? Men of Logic. There's a Zen master in New York who, this is about 20 years ago in the 70s, and I heard that for a lecture he sang that song. What? Who was that? I think it was Edo Shimano. The dream, the impossible dream, you know, because he had come to America and found this song that was sort of the Bodhisattva Vows. So he was up there, you know, which I think the Western kind of people in the assembly thought this was really hokey, but for him, it was like, hey, he thought he was really. Is that where it got real started?

[63:18]

Oh, I don't know. So those vows are way, it's like beyond, they're inconceivable. You make inconceivable kinds of vows, and that, that's what can kind of reach, reach where we need to put our effort. I mean, I have to move my head because I haven't been, and I've only seen this group. I was thinking about the Watership Down story, and I couldn't help but think that if the rabbit hadn't sort of been sort of responsible for his people and their suffering, because in the beginning you mentioned he was a trickster, and that sort of started the king's reason for wanting to get the people and the reason for the starvation. At least that's how I heard the story. And so then that started the rabbit's trek towards saving them and sacrificing himself.

[64:21]

So I wondered if you think that the rabbit would have gone and saved and sacrificed if he hadn't perhaps felt a sort of sense of responsibility or consequence to his own actions. I mean, it was his actions that created the problem. And I wonder if that prompts a lot of people to sacrifice or empathize because they have a sort of connection to the suffering or they are the cause of the suffering. Yeah, well, that's interesting. Well, I think in Elorira's case, the king was trying to hoard various patches of lettuce and stuff for it and not allow them to, and he felt they should be able to have access, so he ends up taking it. So, yeah, I mean, maybe he did feel like it was by consequences of his own actions that he got so mad.

[65:30]

Anyway, you know, skill and means, upaya, skill and means, in Buddhism you can have compassion, but if you don't have skill, skill and means, it's just a term, if you're not skillful in expressing it, you make more trouble, you know, you can make trouble. So maybe that's true, maybe he felt it was because of his own unskillfulness that the guy got so mad or something. And in terms of other people, but he was also king, I mean, he was the leader of these people, so he felt the responsibility, regardless, he felt the responsibility of getting them their lettuce and all of it. In terms of other people, whether we, I think there is an element of that, I mean, I think people who were involved in the civil rights movement and all felt their contribution to racism in this country

[66:30]

and feeling they had to do something personally, even if they lived in the north or, you know, they had to go down and, or, you know, other things, homelessness or just, I do think people feel personally that they are involved by what products they buy and what, you know, I think this is part of social activism, the spirit, people actually feel personally, they don't feel like they have clean hands, you know, and they're going to help somebody else kind of take care of it, they actually, we actually feel I contributed to this, my way of thinking, my actions, my driving a car or whatever is helping to create this, you know, that's true. The story about the rabbit reminded me of one of the Jonica tales. Yeah. Do you think you could share it with us? About the rabbit that throws itself on the fire?

[67:31]

Yeah. Well, it's the same kind of thing, it's sacrificing his body for, to feed others and it's very moving, I remember Foo Schrader told the story in lecture a couple, maybe the last time she spoke or anyway, recently, and it's very, very moving that there's something about the act of throwing oneself, you know, this in the story when he throws himself into the pit, this pestilence pit, there's something about the throwing of oneself and throwing oneself on the fire, and I think psychologically or emotionally we can actually throw ourselves into our life in that way, it doesn't have to be on a pyre or a pit, but like even when we bow, you know, there's a mantra you can say, there's a little phrase you can say when you do full bows, you know, we do full prostrations,

[68:32]

plunging into the bow, that's something you can say to yourself, when you do these prostrations you go down and you plunge yourself into the bow, you plunge into your world, you don't hold back anything, you just throw yourself into your reality with no, no, well maybe I'll save a little for later, you know, you just throw yourself, and if you do that as you meet people or cook a meal or sit at your desk, you know, you just throw yourself into your life the best you can, you know, at whatever your capacity is, the best you can, so there's something about throwing oneself I think that really hits home. I was just going to ask, how does this get rounded up, how do we know which tasks are for us? Well, how do you know, I'd like to hear from you actually, how do you know when something's right for you,

[69:49]

what are your, how do you do it, do you know, would you be able to say? I don't know how I experiment, when something starts to reign me and take away from my purpose, my receiving, my connection, when it robs me of my connection and my roundness in my heart and I know it's not for me, then I disentangle myself, I can't get back onto what feeds my soul. So you actually, it's a physical, you can actually physically feel drained and losing energy and disconnected, and there's a physical manifestation when it's not right for you. It's not physical and it's also a mental attitude, where I'm involved in something that comes back,

[70:51]

there's more energy to go into it, and if it's something that drains me, then I start to doubt and it takes away from me. Yeah, so I think there are these kinds of things, I mean some people have a very fine-tuned psychophysical being, you know, and when something's, when it's wrong, or they're like almost allergic to situations, or people, they get sick, or they get, you know, and I think for those people who are very sensitive in that way, they can actually, they can't bear to be in situations that aren't right for them, you know, in some way, that they can't handle. Other people who have very strong constitutions, you know, like A-type people, I mean this is kind of popular psychology, but not even psychology, this is medical stuff too, but anyway, there are people who are very strong constitutionally, and they have, they just kind of keep going, even long after it's really wrong, you know, until they have a heart attack,

[71:59]

or they're in a divorce, or whatever, so I think, you know, this, how do we find out what is it, what, I mean the question is really, what is our practice, you know, so for many people, and you know, if you haven't, those of you here who haven't done this yet, I'm assuming many of you are interested in this, if you have a sitting practice, or some practice where you spend time on a regular basis, just sitting down, quietly, you know, this can be, and practicing with what is it that thus comes, you know, the Tathagata suchness, what is it that's arising, what is it that's coming up for you, you know, and not going out to kind of fiddle and make it work, and go here and there, just sitting there and receiving the myriad things coming forth, you know, what is it, what is it that thus comes,

[73:06]

so if you have a practice of asking that, because you don't necessarily know, you might think you're supposed to go this way, you know, Steve Weintraub gave that lecture about wrong turnings and detours, you know, is the way, it may look like a wrong turn, but it's actually just exactly right for you, but you have to give yourself some, you have to take care of yourself in order to discern, like you say, it's not a given that you're going to be able to discern, I mean, we all know what can happen when we, you know, are mixed up and confused in the choices we make, so that's one way to go, sit still. Yes, Harry. I have, I've been sitting for a while, I try to do it every day, I sit and I've been reading on what the purpose of it is, sometimes I wonder myself, but I sit,

[74:12]

and the things that come up are the things I think of normally anyway, and I keep thinking, well, why do I keep thinking of the stuff I think of all the time anyway, and I keep thinking I'm going to think of something that, oh, wow, this is great, but I don't have that, I just, same stuff that comes up all day long, I don't know, it's a frustrating time for that, you know, I'm not getting any insights, it seems like, you know, besides the insights that I know, I'm thinking the same stuff I normally do. It's a start. I feel like I'm just, you know, I'm not going anywhere, and I guess everyone feels that way when they're sitting, I guess. Don't hold that in. Just kidding. So you're feeling some frustration about sitting there, having your regular practice, feeling like this is what I want to do, and this is what's recommended, and I'm, and yet, it feels like the same old kind of, what do they call it, monkey mind, same kind of stuff that there's no insight, no...

[75:25]

Because I hear a lecture and someone says something, you know, when they sat, you know, this came up for them, and, you know, God, you know, great, that's going to happen to me, you know, I just, I get it. Well, I, this is not unusual, even though other people are saying this. I think one of the differences is, is I remember somebody saying, oh, the garbage I have in my mind, the garbage. It was like, this was, this goes on all day long, you know, and then, but when they sat down, they realized, this is the contents of my mind, it's garbage, you know. That was an insight, and it sounds like you had that insight, too, somewhat, like, or maybe not, but did you feel that about when you, when you sat down, or when you're sitting that, oh, this is the way my mind works, it's running, it's doing this, it's thinking about this, that, and the other all the time. Was that a new thought, maybe?

[76:30]

You know, I'm a planner, I plan everything, you know, I mean, I have everything, I dissect everything, plan everything. So, I mean, I realize I do that all day long anyway, and then when I sit, I do the same thing, you know, so I feel I'm not doing anything different than when I don't sit or when I do sit. Uh-huh. Are you more aware of the fact that you're doing that when you're sitting versus when you're in your daily life? Oh, probably more so than I would be today, but I mean, the thought has crossed my mind forever, you know, by, you know, my mind planning all the time, you know, trying to think things are going to be better by me planning things, you know. You know, in Dogen Zenji's Universal Admonitions for Zazen, one of the things that it says is, upon preparing your space, you know, at the site of your regular spot, spread out thick matting and place a cushion above it. Do not think good or bad, do not administer pros and cons, cease all the movements of the conscious mind, the gauging of all thoughts and views.

[77:34]

So in some way, the admonition is this regular way of gauging and good and bad and all that, you kind of leave that at the door, you know, and then you sit down and, you know, this, what is this that thus comes, this question is the backwards step, the thinking of not thinking, thinking non-thinking. So if you're sitting and asking what is this that's coming up, that question will kind of beat you to the punch of good and bad, planning, gauging, it's because the question comes first, what is this? So it may look like the same stuff, but because you have this question, what is this that thus comes, what is this planning stuff, what is it? It's not the regular way, it's not the usual way.

[78:38]

So I don't know if that's, I mean that's the kind of meditation instruction, yeah, it gets there first, the question about what is this gets there first before, let's see, tomorrow I got to do this, oh don't forget to call so and so, I got to da da da, the question what is this will get there first. Now another thing that's, I mean, some people have very very busy jobs and have a lot on their mind, like the director at Tassajara once was given permission to keep a little notebook under his Zabutan, because during Zazen he'd be, think oh my god, the fire crew, they've got to be told about da da da, or I have to call, you know, and these were things that really… It's so hard to stop that, because you think it's like, oh I've got to remember this while I'm doing it, and then you've got to push it out of your mind, because oh god, I'm not going to remember when I stopped this, but I need to know this. So you might, I mean you might, he was given permission, this was during practice period, to keep a little notebook, then he'd jot it down, call fire department, and then he could let go of it, you know, and go back to sitting. But otherwise he'd have to, I can't forget, I can't forget. So you might want to do that, just, that might be another thing to help clear.

[79:47]

I think not though, I think for myself it's good for me that I push it out, that thing is not succumbing to that, holding it in there and then remembering it later. I just want to add one more thing, which is, this everyday, you know this phrase, everyday mind is the way? Whatever is coming up in zazen, that's what's coming up in zazen, and it's buddhadharma, it's buddhadharma, that's what it is that this comes, it's just more buddhadharma to help you wake up. So you don't have to think that this is gobbledygook that shouldn't be there and I've got to get rid of it, just honor it and allow it, it's okay. Part of the effort of saying it shouldn't be there, I should be doing something else, I should be more concentrated, just feeds, it just feeds. Being a personality makes it a little difficult. Yeah, yeah. Yes, Elena?

[81:16]

Right, exactly. Thank you. One, two. Well, I was just thinking in regard to what you were saying that, back to the rabbit story, that the really beautiful point in that story was when he was willing to accept defeat, you know, and I think in our practice, oftentimes it's really hard to accept that we're not progressing in a way that we should or we're not emptying our mind in a way that we should and that we're judging ourselves. And one of the things I thought about very early on was that, because my mind, boy, it really is off to the races all the time, and I just thought, well, I'm just not going to worry about it and I'm just going to see what happens. It's going to be like it's on a screen and I'm just letting it go by and not attach myself to it and not, you know, think of it as my mind necessarily, but just as something that's running through my head.

[82:23]

And the rabbit, when he accepted defeat, he was given the way to save his situation because that was the thing that moved, you know, the other rabbit. But he was willing to accept the fact that he tried and tried and tried and that he was beaten and he was even able to accept that. It's like failure is an integral part of success. And then in order for the right thing to finally happen, you know, things that we're so scared to risk, you know, failure, those things are necessarily part of the whole picture that allow the things that we enjoy to happen. Just a point of information, you said someone's admonitions for sitting and I didn't hear the name.

[83:30]

The Zen master is Dogen Zenji, and he wrote this 90 little chapterettes called fascicles, 90 of them called The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye. And one of the little sections is universal admonitions for Zazen and called Fukanzazengi. And we chanted in one of the morning service and when the Togobesu Sashin was here, they chanted it for evening service. And I think in Zen monasteries, Fukanzazengi is chanted every night in the evening, last period of Zazen at night, we chant it. And we have it in our chant book and it's been translated many times in different places. Yeah, there's a myth that I've been trying to understand for several months that I think is mostly about, I mean for myself, in myself more than anything, but also in how I relate to you.

[84:35]

I think it's mostly about masculine and feminine, I think it might be all kinds of different elements, but it's Psyche and Eros. And the end of it is what I'm thinking about is what finally moves Eros. I don't know how to tell the whole story, but Psyche loses Eros because she breaks the commandment not to look at her husband. He's God and she's mortal and she sees him, she shines a light on him and she falls totally in love when she sees him as well. And she is set by Aphrodite for tasks and she completes them with the aid, she gives up every time and it's the aid of an eagle and the aid of ants. And so she gets all this help but she keeps going and she goes all the way to the underworld and comes back out for the fourth task. And the last task is to bring this cask of beauty ointment for Aphrodite and she opens it thinking that maybe there's something in this that will, I guess, for Eros, that will have some kind of power.

[85:43]

And it knocks her unconscious forever and it's that, it's that her helpless sleeplessness forever now is what moves finally Eros to come down and wake her up and she's then made God and the bride, their bride and groom forever. So it's, that's what, that piece I've been trying to understand and that's even, it's such a powerful myth that when they lift the veil, the masculine lifting the bride's veil, we still enact that. So I know it has a very, and I'm looking at the difference of masculine and feminine and my own, I don't want to be weak, I don't want me as to wake me up, you know. But those are real elements in me that what is that, that wakes up the unconscious. And so that did make me think of that being moved, that black rabbit being moved is that same thing that Eros being moved by Psyche's, has done everything and now she's completely helpless and that's what has her become eternal. So it's a nice connection you made.

[86:47]

Yeah, she swoons there at the end. The ointment. After she opens up, yeah. But it's not for her, it's for Aphrodite. Right, right. And that's the end, unless she gets lifted. Lifted. I have a question. So in real life, since I haven't noticed any black bunny, is there some higher power looking over us waiting to be moved before we get our cookie or is it that, is it that we have to be willing to just give up everything in order to have everything, is that what you're saying? Um, let's see. I'm sorry. If it's helpful for you to have a relationship with an energy or something that you feel is responding to you, then that's useful, that's helpful for you.

[88:08]

And, you know, there's various practices around having such a relationship with that energy, which, if you put it out there separated from you, that may be useful at times, or you may think of it, this is just my own energy, I'm going to put it out there to look at it and study it, but it's me, it's my energy. So that may be a helpful way to work. The second thing you said about giving up everything, or is it just giving up everything in order to have, to get anything? I, um, that feels kind of right on, you know? And I don't know how that feels to you, that feels scary here. Well, when you say give up everything, you know, some people, I get letters that says, I'm shaving my head, I'm a vegetarian, I'm coming to Zen Center forever. And I think, oh no, what are we going to do?

[89:13]

Because people get ideas, you know, about what giving up everything is, and it's completely an idea of something, and it's very connected with gaining something often, you know. So, I always am very wary about that kind of thing, that giving up everything, it's just an idea of giving up everything. What is it like to, right now, everybody, give up our idea that we know what's coming next, you know, like right now. And to be in the mind of what is it that thus comes, right now. Well, that's a giving up of everything that you can do right now, you don't have to shave your head, and everybody, that's completely accessible now for everybody, right now. What is it that's rising, you know? And at that state of mind, you do give up everything, you give up all your ideas about this, that and the other, and what you, who that person is, you just wait for them to reveal themselves.

[90:24]

And they will, because it's coming forth right now. So, I think it's closer to that than, you know, being a hermit, you know. Well, I say giving up everything because the Bodhisattva bunny had to lose his ears and his tail. But it's interesting also, because you said he was a trickster, initially he said he was willing to just give up his life. And for some reason, like that wasn't enough, he had to lose his ears and his whiskers. Yeah, that would have been too easy, almost, you know. To just say, okay, I'll take your life in exchange for the people. That black rabbit, as he said, bargains, bargains, everybody's always coming to me and say, you know, come on, please take me and save. Happens to him all the time, people are always doing that. He wasn't interested, but the degree to which he was willing to give up, you know.

[91:25]

But, yes, well, for each person it will be different, the giving up, you know. But the giving up right now of your ideas about the way things are and allowing it to come to you may lead you to having, you know, may lead you into realms you had no idea you had the capacity to go into. And may take you places you never knew you could go. And it may mean that you have your whiskers cut off, it really might mean that. Someone was just telling me today about a young resistance, Jewish girl resistance fighter, 19 years old, who in the Second World War went to Israel to be trained to be a parachutist, to parachute behind the lines into Hungary or Yugoslavia to get to Hungary. And was captured and killed by the Nazis. And, you know, probably as a young girl it never occurred to her, you know, this would happen to her.

[92:33]

You know, she's just living her life, right. But to have this, to drop being willing to give up everything, meaning your ideas of how it's supposed to be and who that person's supposed to be and the way it's supposed to go. So, it's like, it's, this is living, this is living, this is being alive, you know. This is not stale. And you don't know what's right around the corner. So, yeah, giving up everything. Something I didn't understand in the story, you mentioned that he wouldn't eat the food of the black bunny because his thoughts would be revealed. Well, if he had a pure heart and pure thoughts to save his people, why would he be afraid of revealing that? Well, you know, this is where his tricks, he had this trickster nature and he knew the black rabbit of Inle was not going to save his people.

[93:40]

So, how was he going to get the black rabbit to do this? So, he didn't want the black rabbit to see what he was planning, what strategy he was going to be using. Or, like, had the black rabbit known he was going to throw himself into the pit, so he thought. I mean, he was just going to use all his wildness to do what he needed to do. And he didn't want anyone knowing what he was, he didn't know what he was going to come up with either. So, it's skill and means, you know. It's like he had to, just like when you go into the underworld, I mean, Persephone also went down to the underworld and she did eat. She ate the pomegranate seeds, which is the food of the underworld, and so she had to go back. Once she ate those, she had to go back, you know. Had she not eaten anything, she would have been free. So, there's something about taking in, and did Psyche not eat? Psyche was told to eat very little, and she did very well in the underworld, you know, and she got out with the ointment.

[94:40]

So, there's something about going into the dark and eating down there you're not supposed to do. You should study that more, what that's all about. But, anyway, it was skill and means, I think, more than that. His pure heart was pure, but how he was going to get it accomplished, he didn't want anybody to know. So, that's my sense of it. Is that skill in means or skill and means? Skill in means. Thank you. Did you have a hand up? Go ahead.

[95:17]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ