So this morning, we have a story for the kids. Hi, kids. Hi. [...] Why don't you please say your names so that I can know what your name is. What's your name? Sissy. And what's your name? Umra. What's your name? Bennett. What's your name? Lee. What's your name? Okay. I can't remember that, but thank you for telling me. Well, this morning I have a story that might interest you. I hope so. This is a story about a young hare. Do you know what a hare is? I don't have much. Um, here is, uh, there's a word for rabbit.

[01:05]

Oh, what? Rabbit. Rabbit. That's right. That's another name for a rabbit. So, a young hare once lived in a small forest between a mountain and a village and a river. So children, many hares run through the grass, and the moss, but none as sweet as this one. Very sweet hair. So, three friends he had. He had three friends. A jackal, a water weasel, and a monkey. I know that you know what a monkey is. Everybody knows what a monkey is. But what's a jackal? Like a fox. Kind of like a fox, only meaner. Maybe. We think maybe meaner.

[02:06]

He's a jackal. And what's a water weasel? You know what a weasel is? A weasel is always trying to get out of something. A weasel is about this big, maybe, and kind of like a big rat. But, different. Different. So, the three friends, a jackal, a water weasel, and a monkey. So, after the long day's work of searching for food, they came together in the evening. All four to talk to each other and to think together. The handsome Hare spoke to his three companions and taught them many things. So the Hare was very intelligent, very smart, and knew a lot.

[03:10]

He was very wise. And they listened to him. And they learned to love all the creatures in the woods. And they were very happy. My friends, said the Hare one day, let us not eat tomorrow. But the food we find all day, today, we will give to any poor creature that we meet. So instead of eating the food that they collect, they saved it to give to some poor person. They all agreed to do this. So the next day, as every day, they started out at dawn in search of food. So the jackal found in a hut in the village a piece of meat and a jar of curdled milk.

[04:11]

Curdled milk is kind of like cottage cheese. You know what cottage cheese is, don't you? Yeah. With a rope tied to it, to each handle. I don't know why that's important, but... So three times he cried aloud. Whose meat is this? Whose curdled milk is this?" But actually he probably said, whose meat is this? But the hut was empty and hearing no answer, he put the piece of meat in his mouth and the rope of the jar around his neck and he fled to the forest. And laying them at his side, he thought, what a good jackal I am. Tomorrow I shall eat what I have found, if no one comes this way. So he's making an excuse, maybe to keep it for himself, fooling himself into thinking that he's doing a good deed.

[05:25]

And what did the little water weasel find on his round? A fisherman had caught some sparkling golden fish, and after hiding them under the sand, he returned to the river to catch more fish. But the water weasel found the hiding place, and weasels will. And after taking the fish out of the sand, he called three times, whose golden fish are these? But he heard it, whose golden fish are these? But the fishermen heard only the rippling of the river, and none answered his calls. So, he took the fish into the forest to his little home, and he thought, what a good water weasel I am! These fish I shall eat today, but perhaps, I shall not eat today, but perhaps another day. So meanwhile, Monkey Friend had climbed the mountains, and finding some ripe mangoes, you know what mangoes are?

[06:30]

He carried them down into the woods and put them under a tree and he thought, what a good monkey I am. But the hare lay in the grass in the woods and his beautiful eyes were moist with sadness. He said, what can I offer to my poor creature, to any poor creature who should pass by this way? What can I give this anybody who deserves, you know, is a poor person and Who could I really help? So he thought, I can't offer grass, and I have neither rice nor nuts to give. But suddenly, he left with joy. He said, if someone comes this way, he thought, I shall give him myself to eat. Now, in the sweet little wood, lived a fairy with butterfly wings and long hair of moonlight rays.

[07:41]

Her name was Saka. She knew everything that took place in the wood. She knew if a small ant had stolen from another ant. She knew if the thoughts of all the little creatures even of the poor little flowers trampled over in the grass. And she knew that day that the four friends in the wood were not eating and that any food that they might find was to be given to any poor creature they might meet. And so Sokka changed herself into an old beggar man and all bent over with a stick. She could do that. She had this magic power to change herself into an old man. She first went to the jackal, and she said, I have walked for days and weeks and have had nothing to eat.

[08:46]

I have no strength to search for food. Pray, give me something. Oh, jackal, take this piece of meat and this jar of curdled milk, said the jackal. I stole it from a hut in the village, but it's okay if I give it to you." That was pretty good. I will see about it later, said the beggar. And she went on through the shady trees. Then Saka met the water weasel and said, What have you to give me, little one? Take these fish, old beggar, and rest a while beneath the trees, answered the water weasel. Another time, said the beggar, replied, and passed on through the woods. A little farther, Sokka met the monkey and said, Give me of your fruits, I pray. I am poor and starved and weary. Take all these mangoes, said the monkey, and I plucked them just for you.

[09:47]

Some other time, replied the beggar, and did not stay. Then Saka met the hare and said, Sweet one of the mossy woods, tell me, where can I find food? I am lost within the forest and far away from home. I will give you myself to eat, replied the hare. Gather some wood and make a fire and I'll jump in. And you shall then have the flesh of a little hare to roast hare. Sokka caused magic flames to rise from some logs of wood, and full of joy, the heirs jumped into the glowing coals. But the flames were cool as water, and did not burn the skin. Why is it, said he to Sokka, I don't feel the flames. The sparks are as fresh as the dew of the dawn. So Saka then changed herself into her fairy form again and spoke to the hare in a voice sweeter than any voice yet they rehearsed.

[11:00]

Good one, she said. I am the fairy Saka. This fire is not real. It is only a test. The kindness of your heart, O blessed one, shall be known throughout the world for ages to come." So saying, Saka struck the mountain with her wand, and the essence which gushed forth, she drew a picture of the hair on the orb of the moon. We say, But somewhere else, they say, the hare and the moon. So the next day, Jay Hare met his friends again. And all the creatures of the woods gathered around him. And the hare told them of all that had happened to him.

[12:05]

And they rejoiced, and all lived happily ever after. Now, I have two questions for you. One is, what do you think of this story? And the other one is, what does it mean to live happily ever after? And yes, you can answer the second one first if you want. You have a... Oh, you're just kind of resting your arm on your head. All the great characters are... Nothing really bad ever happens to these kids. Say, they can lose a picture once in a while. Or not permanently. Or something like that. But nothing really, really bad ever happens in a game. Okay. Anybody else? They don't have many problems after that. Well, okay, maybe they have some.

[13:05]

But, like, they had that sort of test, and they sort of... I guess you could say they passed it, so then... They don't really have to think. I think they lived happily ever after because they gave up everything. They didn't need anything. They didn't want anything. So they lived happily ever after because they didn't get into trouble. They weren't selfish, so they lived happily ever after. Yeah, even the monkey and the water weasel and the jackal, you know, they were trying to sneak. They're a little bit sneaky. But in the end, they gave up their sneakiness and their generosity flowed out. And that's why they lived happily ever after.

[14:09]

Because they were very generous. Well, thank you very much for listening to this story. And have a good day. And be generous to each other. Okay? Okay? And you'll be very happy. The more generous you are, the happier you'll be. Never ask for Well, that was a good spiel for fundraising.

[15:31]

But I'm not a good fundraiser. Actually, I am a good fundraiser, but I don't think about it very much. Only when we need something do I ask for it. And the sangha has always been very generous. But I've always kind of abhorred or avoided asking people for lots of money. And so I have mixed feelings about asking for money. All my life I didn't I learned how to live without money. And I was very proud of myself. Not really, but I was very happy about learning to live without money. And I was born in 1929.

[16:44]

1929. And I ushered in the Great Depression. It wasn't my fault, but I was part of it. And so we never had any money up until the Second World War. But 1929 to 1941, the country was very poor. And then, of course, the war brought on prosperity. That's the problem with wars is they bring on prosperity for somebody at the detriment to somebody else. So I just learned to live without money. And we didn't have all the things that children have these days, you know. So I never really craved it or wanted to collect it, or I didn't have a bank account.

[17:52]

I had a bank account one time, and when I went to take the money out, because there was so little in there, they had disqualified my account. So that was my five dollars. See that? Gone. So anyway, So I've always been supported, you know, the universe is always supporting me. And I just feel so confident that the universe will support me. And when I, I remember when I was going to art school, and I was supported on the GI Bill because I was in the service. And so that was a kind of support. But every time I needed money, a check would come from someplace. And when I started Zuzendo back in 1967, we didn't have any money.

[18:57]

And as you know, I had a built-in camp, Balkan Sobranity tobacco camp, where we kept the $5 a month dues when somebody would pay them. Not everybody paid the dues, but it was enough. And that's how I aged and we paid the rent. $130 a month rent on this huge house. Those were wonderful days because you could live on nothing in those days. Rent, you know, $130 a month rent was pretty average. That house now would be about $3,000 a month, or maybe more. So, because people had the opportunity to be, to have some freedom, it was a great time. And then, there came a time when everything changed.

[20:02]

Rents went up. cents for yelling. And so everybody had to start going to work. And people get caught up in paying rent with maybe half of a person's salary or more. It just boggles my mind that people are paying $1,500 for a one or two room little apartment. That's unbelievable to me, but it's normal to younger people. So anyway, I could still manage. I remember in the 50s and early 60s I worked as a taxi driver. And the wonderful thing about being a taxi driver

[21:04]

Every day you would drive and some people would pay you and then at the end of the night you would give the money to the cashier at the cab company and they would give you half of it back. What a wonderful way to live. It's all cash. All cash. No checks, nothing in between. You give them the cash and they give you half of it back. So it's day-to-day living. I never counted it. But I always had money when I needed it. So, I just learned to live that way. And trust is that kind of attitude. So, when we started the Zen Center here, as I said, we have the Balkans for what we can. But then, as the Zen Center developed, Somebody said, we should have a bank account.

[22:15]

So I said, OK. And we put the money in the bank account. And then they said, well, you know, I think, actually, I didn't want to incorporate. I didn't want to do that. Imagine, I thought, a Zen center incorporating? A Zen center being associated with a corporation? And everybody supported that. One day I said, for some reason, we should incorporate. A voice told me, we should incorporate. So we did. And we had a bank account, and a corporation, and a board of directors. And little by little, it started growing in that way. But I never asked for money. The Sangha always says, I think you need this. And so they would give me, I think you need $150 a month salary.

[23:20]

That's the way it was for many years, even when we moved here, after 12 years. $150 a month, and board. Room and board, but not room, but not board. But I never asked for the money, because it didn't mean much to me. And the Sangha has always provided my welfare, even when I didn't want it. But whenever we needed something, I would ask the Sangha, and immediately people would contribute. So we never had a financial problem. for 40 years or more. So I feel very confident. But times have changed. And as times have changed, people get nervous.

[24:26]

And when you have property, you need to keep it up. I recognize that we need to keep up our property and we need to do repairs. And so we have a very constant board at this point. I'm skipping all the years in between. We have a very confident board of people who are concerned about maintaining this place and our practice. So I'm making a compromise between my own attitude and the board's attitude, which is fine. Because I listen to the board, and I accept their way of doing things, and they listen to me. So I feel it's very harmonious. So we have more fundraising sessions

[25:33]

now than we ever did. And in the last couple of years, we've been doing that. And it's been very helpful. We've been able to do seismic work. We've been able to do repairs. Seismic work has, you know, nobody thought about that in the old days. But now it's really a big thing. And it's getting bigger, actually. People have to really pay attention to seismic upgrading. And all that costs money. But I have to say that we still do our own work. There are two ways of going. One is to hire people to do your work, and the other is to do your work yourself. And we're a combination. I like the combination. I don't like not doing our own work and just hiring people to do the work for us, which is so much more expensive. I'm a real miser. So one example is seismic work that we needed to do, which some of the bidding was from $50,000 to $20,000.

[26:46]

So we did it for $150 or a couple of hundred dollars by ourselves. So you have to be very careful. You can just, money can just go whoosh out the window. So, you know, in the olden days, when we started Pasahara in 1967, it just so happens that there were a whole bunch of carpenters. And so we did all that work with the carpenters, you know, and people who were handy and could do annual labor. And then they all disappeared, you know, after the work was no longer needed. But they were all students, and the same thing remodeling this building, which was once a house, with a wall going all the way down the middle, an apartment on that side, an apartment on this side. And Ron was maybe the first resident here.

[27:48]

No, I wasn't in this particular building. You weren't? Okay. So, and then we raised that building next door and put that first floor under it. And we had a lot of carpenters. They showed up. Carpenters showed up, you know, magically. And they did a lot of work. So, did most of the work. And then threw other people in to do work, too. It was expensive, but not as expensive as if we had somebody else do the work. So this is my kind of attitude, you know. As much as we can to do our own work, and as much as we can to support each other, and I've always been very grateful for the support I've had, and the ongoing support for myself. And now, we need to support our other vice-advocate, Alan Snoddy, and his family, coming up for all of the service that he does for us.

[28:59]

So, for me, we're talking about Supporting our teachers? I'm not worried about my support, but I am concerned about Alan's support. I think the support, what comes from that support, should aid him and his family. I don't have any desire for more support. Matter of fact, I don't need any more, but they do. Anyways, I would hope that you would And I see that Peter has this big speeder that he's going to hit me over the head with. So anyway, thank you for your attention.

[29:50]

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