We've known each other for more than 20 years. So Mushim is a core teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center and I recommend you checking that out. I go there from time to time on Friday nights and I really value the community and in the Korean Zen tradition. She's practiced in Japanese-style Soto and Rinzai Zen. She has some experience with Theravada tradition. Relatively recently, she was awarded a Doctorate of Sacred Theology from the Star King School.

[01:12]

And I know Mushim as a really strong advocate for inclusivity and diversity and someone who has a Thank you very much, Hossan, and thank you. Thank you, everyone, for your practice and for your effort in making the plans that are needed, setting the time aside, bringing the heart-mind into unification that's needed in order to come to this place of dharmic practice and sangha, our third jewel spiritual community.

[02:19]

So it really takes effort and I want to thank you for that right effort and for your practice. So something that Hossam Allen didn't mention in his introduction is that I was with him as part of the delegation of around 23 socially engaged Buddhist leaders from five urban areas in the United States and a similar number of socially engaged Catholic leaders from the same five urban areas in the United States who at this time last year went to Rome. for a inter-religious dialogue and fraternity conference and also to talk about how we can work together to address social suffering.

[03:26]

And that trip included an audience with His Holiness, Pope Francis. So that was a wonderful way to also extend our Dharma friendship. The talk that I've prepared this morning is on my current favorite topic. And it, yeah, my current favorite topics, joining together, the topic, the title is Universal Spiritual Friendship, which some of you know by the name of Metta or Maitri in the Buddhist teachings. So universal spiritual friendship and the practice of bravery. the practice of bravery. I was brought up by my mother, who was a second-generation Japanese-American, or nisei, meaning that that's the Japanese-American way of counting of the generations.

[04:32]

So the nisei, ni means two in Japanese, are actually the first generation of United States-ian-born people of Japanese descent in this country. Her mother and father, my grandparents, were all from Japan. And I was brought up by my mom to write thank you cards whenever anyone gave me a gift. And that early training, has really, along with my Buddhist training, has made me into an adult who makes a practice of expressing gratitude in the spirit of universal spiritual friendship. I like to buy nice cards and write things by hand when I am able to do so. I also do a lot of stuff by email and a certain amount of work by phone, and I always try

[05:39]

I don't even really need to think about it at this point. It has just become a practice that every day I try to express gratitude towards people who come through my mind, sometimes from the past. It might not be anything that's recent, for whom I think of them and I think, wow, they were really good to me. They gave me that gift. They gave me support and mentoring and encouragement. They gave me that tip that led me to a job or to a resource that I needed access to. And really, they didn't owe me anything. This was just out of pure kindness. This was pure Buddha nature expressing itself as goodness and as generosity. And then that gratitude rises up. And I think for some people, we live such pressed lives, then going that extra step to express it might be something that we need a little bit of encouragement for. And it's something that I really do put a lot of effort into every day.

[06:47]

Even to the extent that in my staff job at East Bay Meditation Center, we're in downtown Oakland, please come down to see us. I'm informally referred to on the staff as the gratitude czar. because I like to do it. So if there's a donor or someone that we want to express gratitude towards, say someone jets me an email or says, will you write them a card? And then I get a beautiful card and I do and I take it and I have everyone sign it or I'll send it. So I'm the gratitude czar. A position which I would like to train others in. So if any of you would like to be mentored, you can contact me. You just need a pen and some really nice cards and stationery, or maybe you're an artist and you make them yourself. So perhaps to state the obvious, not merely feeling, but instead, and in addition to making the effort to express our thank yous,

[08:00]

is a form of connection to others that has the humble and everyday power of busting me out of my self-fixation on my problems and my stresses and You're all intelligent adults, so you know that this doesn't mean avoidance or procrastination. We do have problems. We do need to solve them. And there can easily be a kind of a dwelling or fixation on. And so I would propose that this practice of manifesting gratitude is very powerful. It can also turn my heart-mind attention Instead, to shining light on how another person or beings, doesn't need to be a human being, could be an animal, could be anything, your car, how another person or beings' actions has affected me, enriched me, or their presence has affected me and enriched me, their example, their life.

[09:13]

And again, not just saying thank you, but taking time to write to someone else and not just saying thank you, but saying you did this, you said that. You modeled bravery when I saw you do thus and so. You were kind when you could understandably have been vindictive. And you have changed me. You have changed my life for the better. Teachers will often talk about how, of children, how much it impacts them in a positive way when they get letters from their students who were little kids when they knew them. and have grown up into wonderful adults, and they get these letters of, I remember you from third grade, and when you said thus and so, or you did thus and so, that changed me. I still remember that.

[10:17]

All the teachers I know talk about that, how much it warms their hearts, and in an often thankless job, just brightens their whole day, gives them strength, gives them inspiration, gives them confirmation that what they are doing is worthwhile. As Buddhist practitioners, we're always planting seeds. And ideally we do so with that beautiful spirit of non-attainment and non-grasping and non, I've done this for you, therefore you have to thank me or you have to shape up and show that you've heard what I've said. So we let go of all of that. Those of us who are parents know that very, very well. And we just continue to plant those seeds. So it's good that sometimes we can know there has been a harvest. Not every seed sprouts during our lifetime, and not every seed sprouts or comes to fruition that we know of.

[11:18]

It might, and maybe we don't know it. Therefore, when we get that feedback, so valuable, flip that around, can we offer that to others? You planted a seed and it's grown into a wonderful tree and I want to tell you. And that is a powerful, very powerful practice. My original Zen teacher, Venerable Samu Sinim, who's a Korean Zen monk, with temples in Toronto, Ann Arbor, Chicago, and there's a group in Mexico City, I believe, and he has a temple in Manhattan, I think, in New York City now. I helped to start the temple in Ann Arbor, Michigan. So that's where I started my training. He once said around 1984 in Michigan in a Dharma talk, as I recall, that after Shakyamuni Buddha's great enlightenment,

[12:19]

He then walked around for the next 45 years practicing universal friendship. Practicing universal friendship. And at the time, presumably he was referring to the quality of Metta in Pali, Maitri in Sanskrit. So presumably he was referring to the Metta Sutta and the Buddha's discourse on what is translated as either loving kindness or I personally think more accurately goodwill. A lot of people, however, say loving kindness and and like that. So, both I think are good. So, presumably Samusina was referring to the Mettā-sutta and to Mettā when he said that the Buddha lived apparently a really long time.

[13:23]

I think he died when he was around 80. And so, He spent a really long time walking around and practicing and sharing the Dharma and teaching. And my teacher characterized that as sharing universal and practicing universal friendship. And we can fast forward from when I heard that in a Dharma talk, so it's probably around 1984, to today, we're in the 4th of July weekend, 2016, here in Berkeley, California. Fast forward to 2016 in US Buddhism, and we now know that there's an incredibly popular practice of loving kindness meditation. This has gone into secular society. It's not necessarily said to be Buddhist. Sometimes it's acknowledged that the roots are Buddhist and people of all faith traditions and no faith traditions are now practicing

[14:29]

loving kindness meditation, universal friendship meditation around the world. So in other words, not just thinking, oh, yeah, it would be great to be more friendly and maybe we'd have more peace in the world. This is an actual practice, as many of you know, and it is a powerful and transformative practice. One of the Brahmaviharas I have seen a number of translations into English of the discourse on goodwill or loving kindness, the Metta Sutta. In one translation into English, it says that the, and all of them, of course, are going to be similar, it says that the practice First of all, it says that practicing universal friendship is the best way to be a human being.

[15:35]

It's the best way. And that we should practice it sitting, standing, walking, and lying down. The four traditional postures of a human being in the teachings of the Buddha. So that essentially means 24-7. While we're awake, while we're conscious, the instruction, the invitation is to always be generating, always be manifesting universal friendship. And it says in the discourse, the practice is to radiate this goodwill outward from us toward all beings all the time in all postures of our body towards every living being. And in this English translation, translation into English, it says omitting none, excluding none.

[16:41]

So, in other words, loving kindness and goodwill towards 100% of all beings, not 80 or 90%, which I personally think is pretty good. However, Buddha evidently set the bar at 100%. And for most of us, when the rubber hits the road, that's a pretty tall order. It is. It's a pretty tall order. The Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh has said that part of our growth as human beings and as Dharma folks is to learn how we can love the unlovable. So he's made a good point. He says, lovable people are easy to love and everybody loves them. Of course. And you know, it's great that they're so lovable. They're wonderful.

[17:46]

They have beautiful qualities and they're well loved. And he says, who needs to love more? the lovable people or the unlovable people. It's kind of inescapable logic. No, Thich Nhat Hanh, I wish you had not said that. Because once you think about it, you can't escape. The case is made, of course. The unlovable, those who have been deeply injured, who are bitter, very understandably, who are perhaps angry, who may not treat themselves and others well. They need the loving kindness. They need the goodwill. And that's not to ignore the lovable also. They're just 100%, 100%. Expressing universal gratitude and friendship means, therefore, I would say embodying positive connectivity.

[18:56]

So it's not just going around thinking, oh, may you be happy, may you be peaceful. I mean, that's pretty good. That provides a certain kind of attitude. It's also, I believe, that we need to go then the next step and ask how we're putting that into action. As Zen people, I think that's pretty familiar. Zen, in the way it's been taught to me, is very active. It's all about manifestation. You can sit around thinking about world peace and that's pretty good, then how are we manifesting in the middle of the contradictory and the grievous and the suffering nature of this world and our own minds? How do we manifest? How do we embody? How does this body become the body of universal friendship and of gratitude?

[19:59]

It becomes that, I believe, through appropriate expressions of positive connectivity. So in other words, connecting, connecting, connecting. And once again, connecting to that, the practice I think is connecting to that which we ordinarily might be averse to connecting to and to loving the unlovable. That includes the unlovable parts of ourself. I mentioned earlier that last year around this time we were in Rome and That was a wonderful experience for me in connecting to the Catholics who were there. They were very strong, both monastic and lay practitioners. They were all leaders. Something that I've wanted to come closer to for, it's really been a theme in my own practice in a subterranean way, one of those hidden streams, not hidden to me, hidden to others, just because it's something that's been quiet for me, but for a really long time is I've wanted to learn more about the Catholic contemplative practice of centering prayer

[21:26]

which includes a practice called welcoming prayer. And some of them you may know this and practice it. So I first heard of Centering Prayer through my old friend Robert Aitken Roshi years and years and years ago. The old guy was an old-fashioned kind of scholar, person, writer person. And so if you wrote him a letter, he would always write you back. That was my experience anyway. It might take him a while. He would always write back. And I like to write letters and I'm a writer, so I would write him letters and he would write me letters. That's how we had a relationship basically as writers. And at one point, I remember he wrote me and said, quite a few of my students who are Zen students practice a Catholic practice called Centering Prayer, which is very much like our Zen meditation. And I kind of made a mental note, that's interesting. And then I determined I was curious about it.

[22:31]

Many, many years passed. And then I started getting to know some Catholics. And I even wrote to one Catholic priest whom I met on an interfaith panel on grief and loss. And I wrote to him and I said, could you tell me how I can learn centering prayer and welcoming prayer? And not being an old-fashioned correspondent, this person never replied to me. So I thought, fine, I shall continue my quest. And I did. And so I connected in planning to go on this trip to Rome with the organizer, Professor Don Mitchell, who's Catholic. And I said, Don, what about centering prayer? And he said, oh, yes. He said, I practiced that, and I would be glad to tell you more. And then we got busy with other things. And in the meantime, I also got a pamphlet on it from a teacher named Carol Gray, Anandi Carol Gray, who is a teacher with a yoga-based college called, I think the Ananda College of Universal Wisdom, that my nephew, who is a yoga teacher and a meditation teacher already at the age of 23, he attended there and graduated from there.

[23:57]

So Anandi Gray was and is one of his mentors. And I met her, wonderful person, very friendly. And she went off to New Mexico or some place like that for a week and did a retreat in which she learned centering prayer and welcoming prayer. And since then, I've talked to some other Catholics. So my understanding is this, that Centering Prayer seems to me to be pretty much like the meditation we do. It's quiet sitting. I believe there's a tension to breathing and, you know, coming into the present in the body, in the breath, allowing things to settle down. And for Catholics, I believe they use the wording, inviting the divine indwelling. One word, indwelling. My understanding would be that manifesting a connection to that which manifests as a divine and dwells within us.

[25:01]

We might not be in contact with it all the time, always there. I can relate to that as a Buddhist. And so we do that and you get all centered and that. And the welcoming prayer is part of that. So my understanding is, from a Catholic I met at a mindfulness conference also last year in June, is that when we're not doing the centering prayer, we're not meditating in other words, and we're in our everyday lives, and something happens or there's an annoying person or someone cuts us off on the freeway, anyway, something happens And normally we just get really angry and think, no, why is that? And they shouldn't do this and that damn this. And you know, those people that, um, in global climate change, whatever that, um, that instead we again connected to the divine indwelling and it's called welcoming prayer.

[26:07]

And we say, welcome, welcome. Welcome. So instead of pushing away, we welcome in. We're doing this in a sensible way, so we're not inviting anything harmful to come and harm us. This is a state of heart-mind. We're using our ability to to work with our own thoughts. And so instead of saying, go away, go away, go away, we're saying welcome, welcome, welcome. That welcoming and hospitable attitude, omitting none. Universal friendship, omitting none. Welcome, I give up, and then this part actually, the first time I read it in this pamphlet on welcoming prayer, I just started crying. It says, I give up desire for security, affection, and control.

[27:08]

So you notice, as far as I can see, it doesn't say anything in there about God. Catholics obviously, I believe, believe in God. This prayer is not to say, I'm praying to some being and give me something or anything like that. It says, instead, I have an agency and I can give up my desire and my fixation on security, affection, and control. Of course, I believe this is meant in the deep spiritual sense. We all have desires for safety, for love and affection and Sangha community support. We all have appropriate desires for agency and control. in the sense of being agents who are effective and beneficial in our life spheres and in our relationships.

[28:18]

This is going into that spiritual realm where, as we know from our own experience and from the recent news of all of the shootings, the slaughter that is happening around the world and close to home, that there is no ultimate physical security, that we cannot ultimately control whether other people give us affection or not. and that we have to, of course, give up control in so many ways as we age, if we're injured and due to many other circumstances, which are far beyond our ability to manipulate in order to meet our personal needs. So that's a welcoming prayer. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

[29:19]

I give up desire for security, affection, and control. And with that letting go, in my experience, there can be an unexpected surge of gratitude. Therefore, practicing universal gratitude, becoming a gratitude leader in an invisible way, a secret gratitude czar without official position. To do this, I personally think means we would need to overcome fear and practice bravery in little, I'm surrounding that with quotation marks because little things can be very significant, practice bravery, and by that I meant without fanfare. Practice bravery in little and everyday ways. I think that for myself, I need to practice lots and lots of bravery.

[30:24]

And by that we mean to overcome our fears. Welcome, welcome, welcome can also be meaning thank you, thank you, thank you to old age, sickness, and death, and taxes. to despised political figures and people who parked diagonally to deliberately take up two spaces in a crowded parking lot. Not long ago, 49 people in the LGBTQI community were gunned down in a nightclub in Orlando, Florida. And yet, this act of hatred did not stop the San Francisco Pride Parade from happening, as always, last weekend, and did not cancel or dampen. very incredible and joyous Nepalese-Cuban-Puerto Rican-United Statesian wedding I just officiated at last weekend at a social justice retreat center in rural Virginia, at which many members of the LGBTQI community were present and many social justice activists.

[31:44]

Everyone knew what had happened and we all made a decision. We will be happy to be together. There were many children, there were flowers, it was spectacular. How does this happen? Because people can be brave. It can even be said that bravery is natural to us. It's part of our Buddha nature, part of our birthright. A writer and a teacher I greatly admire is Galen Ferguson of the Shambhala Organization. He wrote his first book called Natural Wakefulness, which I've quoted from many times when I give talks, and he just came out hot off the press as natural bravery. Fear and fearlessness as a direct path of awakening, of course, published by Shambhala. Let me just read a brief quote in which he says, he talks about different kinds of fear and it's written in very short segments.

[32:55]

So in section 18, which is contemplating compassionate motivation, Galen Ferguson says, we human beings influence each other. Speaking the truth encourages others to be brave and genuine. My acts of deception are also contagious. Human hearts radiate constantly, encouraging either expansiveness and warmth or contraction into selfishness. It's up to us. We are the stewards and caretakers of the atmosphere of the culture we live in and co-create together. We are the stewards and caretakers of the atmosphere of the culture we live in and co-create together.

[34:01]

And that's what we're trying to do at East Bay Meditation Center. So from where I'm situated, the world as a whole, I think myself, may not necessarily need more Buddhism as an ism or more Zazen or more of anything that is a labeled spirituality or religion. I mean, for those who are so inclined, of course, including myself, incredibly wonderful. I'm not sure the world as a whole needs any of this as much as the world badly needs and cries out for community, which means communing, embodying positive connectivity, and also needs bravery, and to come closer in friendship across lines of difference and distrust, across lines even of fear and hatred.

[35:06]

So that I propose to us today that we, if we like, could take up, consider taking up our koan, our Zen question, which is, to what and whom can I be a great friend today? That's capital F. To what and whom can I be a great friend today? And how can I manifest friendship and bravery? I have done Rinzai-style Koan practice, the scary kind, you know, where you have to answer this question that, of course, you can't answer. And you can't answer it by thinking about it, and you can't not think about it because you do have to answer it. Then you have to go into this little room, and there's a very intimidating Zen master with a big stick. And so I have done that here in Asia. And I was generally a failure at Koan practice, as far as I can tell. But I did it and I was very afraid and I tried and tried and failed and failed and kept trying and then eventually something would happen and then all the fear would be gone and only friendship and gratitude remain.

[36:29]

So in the words of my late and departed great friend, Sufi, Muslim teacher and leader, Baba Ibrahim of the Starsky King School for the Ministry. He used to end his talks this way, and I've, in gratitude towards him, begun the same custom. I'd like to end by saying, may all who seek find. We are here, I would guess, because we are spiritual seekers. So may all of you who seek, may you find, may all who love become complete. Thank you. And I believe we may have about 10 minutes for your comments, your questions, and your insights.

[37:30]

Are you feeling more friendly? You don't have to say yes. Thank you, okay, there we have it. This is not a spiritual practice. It's so hard, too, you know? Tea. Thank you very much. Thank you. I personally really agree. Yes? the world needs more Zazen or more Buddhism, but it does need community.

[38:40]

And I wonder how you envision, I mean, what is the basis of community that you envision? Thank you. That is a wonderful question. So at East Bay Meditation Center, we have begun to use the term, which in my knowledge, really became associated with the Civil Rights era and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 's work, we have begun to really talk about Sangha as beloved community and creating beloved communities. So that obviously is not limited to any faith, any practice, any idea of the spiritual in terms of any defined way, as much as it would be my understanding of, I would say, a state of being and a set of practices, which include multicultural awareness, diversity and inclusion awareness and practices.

[39:51]

in order for human beings to learn how to take care of what, if it's not true that Pope Francis has called our common home, Earth and all the beings on it, because we are beyond doubt. We are beyond doubt all connected to one another, even if we don't want to be. It's not a matter of volition. We are so connected. Our very survival depends on the creation of beloved community. And so that would be, I would say, for the greatest good for all. and our creativity are, we have these huge prefrontal cortexes, folks, as human beings. So let's put it to work and get creative in trying to figure out how we are going to create this beloved community.

[40:53]

Now is the time, in my opinion. Thank you. Yes. I see a hand in the air. My understanding, my memory, is that Dr. King got to love the community. I'm forgetting the name of the religious figure who was the founder of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. So at the core of this, for both of them, and something I want to ask you about, is nonviolence as a mode of, as an underlying principle of relationship. Can you say something about how that might pertain in the communities that you're seeing and trying to weave together. Thank you, Alan. That's a really good point, and I didn't know that, that you're saying that Dr. King's use of the term beloved community came from the founder of Fellowship of Reconciliation, and it's founded in the principle of nonviolence.

[42:02]

I was trained, I took the two-day introductory training, which I recommend to all of you who haven't done it, in Kingian nonviolence by a fantastic Kingian nonviolence trainer named Kazu Haga. Kazu Haga. He is a member of East Bay Meditation Center and he is also the founder of East Point Peace Academy. East Point Peace Academy. They have a great website and he is doing Kingian nonviolence training all over the United States and he is the recipient, most recently, of the Fellowship of Reconciliations IV's, FOR's, Martin Luther King Jr. Prize for this year. And so, my understanding, which I agree with and I got from this two-day training with Kazu in Kenyan nonviolence, is that we need to really understand that nonviolence is not simply holding back from committing acts of violence.

[43:18]

in as much as we can and saying, hey, I'm cool because I'm not out there shooting people or beating things up or pulling, putting toxins on the land. And so I'm good. that it cannot be passive. It can't be that saying, hey, I'm not doing these things. That nonviolence is active. It is very, very active. And it means doing what we can to prevent violence, to neutralize violence, and to instead instill practices which are those of nonviolence, of non-hatred, of whatever words that you want to use to describe what nonviolence and non-hatred is. And I think that would be a pretty good koan in and of itself. What is nonviolence? So thank you. I think there was someone up here and then there.

[44:20]

I just wanted to share that in my practice for many years, I've had a habit of saying thank you. I learned from a child who read a book, said thank you book. But I find that it comes up in traffic and everywhere. And that's when it really is the tool that I need. And so whatever it takes to keep remembering thank you, it'll surprise you when you get it. So powerful, isn't it? Transformative. Yes, my cousin is a Soto Zen Buddhist priest in Hawaii on the Big Island, and she adopted, in a surprise move, a rescue cat whose name was Harpo. And so she brought Harpo home in the car, and he was getting used to the new place in the temple. Actually, he became a wonderful temple cat. But he was new, so he was all freaked out. He was scared. And my niece, my cousin's daughter, was saying, well, his name is Harpo.

[45:25]

However, he's probably very grateful. He should be really grateful to us that we have saved him. And so, arigato gozaimasu means thank you very much in Japanese. She said, so we could call him Harpo arigato. And apparently, when she said that, Harpo literally rolled his eyes. and walked out of the room. Making the very good point that our practice of gratitude is for us, and we can't tell other people to be grateful. Thank you. One more, and then we're probably going to wind this up. I think there was someone over here. Yes, and maybe two more, yeah. I'm a little confused, and maybe I'm not even going to ask about what we're talking about. When you were talking about community, I started thinking about things, but a lot of those things I was thinking about were verbs. I wasn't thinking about community as a noun. You know, I was thinking about that back in the winter, one of my elderly neighbors wandered off until someone came around, let us know, and we all went out looking for her.

[46:37]

And I thought of that as community, not as we didn't all come together and become best buddies, but that was an action. And it's almost like that sort of brought some goodwill because the neighbors were talking and we talked to their family and all this stuff. But then it sounded like we kind of shifted, but we were talking about communities that we create for like a plan or something. I mean, does it encompass Very good point. Definitely, definitely yes. And so the key part that I'm getting from, if I've heard you correctly, is you said, and we got together to do this specific good neighborly thing and we didn't become best buddies or anything. That I think is a wonderful insight and once again points to omitting none and that 100% quality is how can we think of community in terms of beneficial actions, helpful, loving actions in which we don't have some expectation necessarily that we're all going to become best buddies.

[47:49]

Because then that opens the space to be, we can be different. We don't even need to really like each other as much as we need to agree. Here's something that needs to be done to help. So thank you. How do you practice with that? Thank you. As the introduction said, I have been exposed to the Theravada because East Bay Meditation Center is rooted in Vipassana practice. I've rolled that into what I do, or mindfulness meditation in the secular sense.

[48:51]

And so, as you probably know, at least the American practitioners of Vipassana, many of them, they will say that, according to their teachings, that human beings are one of three basic personality types. The greed type, the aversive type, and the deluded type. And I am definitely the aversive type. I mean, I have my own greed. It's not my thing in general, and I have my own delusion. However, aversion, know a lot about. And therefore, that's why this welcoming prayer has been so good for me. And there are a couple things, I think the question was, what do we do when these thoughts arise? With these people, they must go. They have to be out. I've got to create this line. So part of that can be very healthy. It's what we call setting healthy boundaries. We don't want to invite harmful people into our living room to harm us, or toxic energies.

[49:58]

We need to learn how to appropriately set that boundary. Very, very healthy. So we can recognize that part of it. And then there's the other part, which is not healthy, and which is not needed, and it's that extra part of not only should they go away, they should suffer. And that would be really, like, that would be really great if they would. I won't tell anybody, I'll just think it. And so the way that I'm working with that is through the welcoming prayer and also through just deductive logic, which is that by creating that kind of excluding energy, that kind of go away, you should not exist, energy that that that is not helping that person at all. It's not helping that person to change or even have space to transform and manifest behaviors that would be more helpful to me.

[51:04]

And therefore, I'm going to be selfish, completely selfish, and try to practice universal friendship in a brave manner when I think about that harmful person or that person that I find very negative for me, for my benefit. It's similar to the practice of forgiveness. We don't forgive other people to control them or to change them. The forgiveness is completely for ourselves. It is a self-serving act which brings great benefit to our lives to forgive. Thank you.

[51:41]

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