Morning. Still feels a little odd to uh be sitting in a chair here with a lectern down here. It's all a little different than still just recovering from an injury. I think it's take a little time yet. Turns out that recovering from an injury at 53 is different than 22, as I remember. Thank you for for all your efforts in in the session so far. I think it's fair to say that session requires steadfast effort. These long hours of upright sitting and and a full schedule. I had a moment where where he said you could have been on a beach sipping an alcoholic beverage of your choice, and I'm like, what? I could. But then, you know, in my experience of sitting on the beach and drinking alcoholic drink, it you know, ever anything can get old after a little while. I spent some time in in Kauai, which is I don't know if you've ever been there, some may people will, some people won't. But you know, quintessential, beautiful, kind of tropical island. I remember being there and um going snorkeling, and it's like you know, finding Nemo under the water, it's amazing. You see all of that, it's like it's amazing snorkeling and doing that the first day, and then the next day we were out at the beach, and it's like you want to go snorkeling? Sure. Went in and snorkeled again, and then on the third day it was like we're gonna go snorkeling. Do you want with the snorkeling, you know? Is there anything else to do here? No, like board in paradise on on day three, you know. So um so there's that. That's uh maybe a part of our human human nature too, is this uh undercurrent or undertow of uh of dukkha and um and and dissatisfaction that's that is inherent in our in our human experience in that in that human condition. I wanted to bring up uh a Koan today from the my well-worn at this point copy of the book of equanimity. This has the translation by Shishin Wick Roshi, one of Mizumi Roshi's Dama Dharma heirs, a Dharma brother attention Roshi. He did a wonderful job with his uh with the commentaries. Um I was also looking at the the book of Serenity, sometimes translated that way by uh Cleary, Dr. Cleary did, and uh that contains all of the the notes and the capping phrases and uh more more more commentary by the uh original compiler Tendo Wanchi and um and and a couple of others in there that contribute so a lot more in that in that translation. Um interesting that you know in Tendo Wanchi you put the Book of Serena Book of Equanimity together. Apparently, the first copy that was made, uh, which of course you know was an enormous amount of work in those days to produce a book. You know, like many common collections, it was an amalgam of drawn together from existing collections, uh, some from here, some from there, and then he wrote his uh pointers and and and verses for for each. But the original one was uh was lost, and he had a student who was uh pretty high court official. This was in the Southern Song dynasty, like early 13th century, somewhere around there. And he had uh his job, his posting was um to go to Mongolia and work at the court of Genghis Khan. And he was part of a group of Chinese, educated Chinese noblemen of that time who went there in order to help mitigate the harsh rule of the Mongols in China in that area, you know, which is like no small, that's a heck of a foreign policy posting. You know, you're gonna go work with trying and soften Genghis Khan a little bit. Imagine the typical work day. I just execute everybody.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we could do that, but maybe not execute everybody.
SPEAKER_02Um so he had that he had that foreign policy uh posting, and um he actually apparently asked Tendo Wanchi to produce uh a copy of the book of equanimity that he could he could have so that he could continue his uh Zen studies, which he did. And through that amazing happenstance and circumstance, it comes down to it comes down to us today. That student would be had a Confucian upbringing, been like like many of the educated people of uh of those times. And so some of that is also in the book of equanimity, has a lot more, you know, in these you see in some of these uh commentaries, um, they weave in a lot of the allegory and um story that's drawn from all over uh the influences in China at that time in Taoism, Confucianism, you know, not just um uh Buddhism per se. And he said so he wrote the book of equanimity and compiled it. And I'll often look at this book because well, I I love it very much, and I I worked on this when I returned to Yoki after a short time of returning to Yokoji, and and so I remember it well, and often skip past over first case because the first case can seem so straightforward and maybe difficult to even add anything to, but that's a case that I I wanted to bring up today. So this is uh case one. The world honoured one ascends the platform. Preface to the assembly, close the gate and snooze. That's how to treat a superior person. Reflection, abbreviation and elaboration are used for middling and inferior ones. How can you stand for someone to ascend the high seat and scowl? If anyone around here doesn't agree, step forward. I have no doubts about him. Main case. Attention, one day the world honoured one, for that's the Buddha, one day the world honored one ascended the platform and took his seat. Manjushri struck the sounding post and said, When you realise the Dharma King's Dharma, the Dharma King's Dharma is just as is. At that the world honored one descended from the platform. Appreciatory verse Do you see the true manner of the primal stage? Mother Nature goes on weaving warp and woof. The woven old brocade contains the images of spring. Nothing can be done about the spring gods outflowing. So our main case, attention, one day the world honored one ascended the platform and took his seat. Manjushri struck the sounding post and said, When you realize the Dharma King's Dharma, the Dharma King's Dharma is just as is. At that, the World Honored One descended from the platform. So perhaps on the surface, this appears very, very straightforward and an easier day for the Buddha than perhaps from usual. There's a couple of other Koan cases that have this something close to this approach. A little further into the book of Aquanimity, we have Yakusan, who's in our lineage, Yakusan Egan, being asked by the administrator monk, you haven't given a talk for many for a long time. You know, the monks are wondering, well, could you please give a talk? And he goes up and looks around and then closes the books and book and gets back down and leaves and says to the administrator monk, you have uh sutra teachers for sutras and uh meditation teachers for meditation. Why are you bothering this old monk? It brings something very human into it as an as an elder teacher, well used to giving talks, and maybe well used to people really not picking things up or picking up the baton, so to speak. Who knows? Who knows what his state of mind, his causes and conditions were at that time. But it it was a it was a teaching. Remember Tenshin Roshi saying that Maizumi Roshi once was started to give a talk, and then somebody was muttering to somebody in the back, and he he just folded up his book and his cloth, got up and left. And that was a that that was the Dharma talk for the day. That that was for teaching. So sometimes what is a Dharma talk? Like in our in our in our practice, for myself in Sesshin, I really look forward to the to the Dharma talks. You know, you had a couple of days of um trying to settle down, going through some initial barriers around kind of discomfort, pain, and um wondering maybe you should have gone to that beach. And then you'll hear a wonderful Dharma talk, and there is the reminder, ah, that's why I do this. You know, something will be pointed out, something there's a a remembrance, a remembrance. That's often what a Dharma talk invites is is is a remembrance. We have this um this conditioned view of the world. Everyone. Nobody escapes that. Nobody escapes their bias. Everybody has that conditioned view of the world, but often our conditioned view obscures the um the immediate uh unconditioned reality of our life, of his life. Yeah, I wonder like what words can we use to describe that? The Dharma King's Dharma is just as is for those who realize it. It's just as is. That just as is is just as is now, always just as is. But it's often it's covered up or obscured by our ideas, projections, opinions, and beliefs, and narrative around this just as is. The Buddha was clearly an extraordinary uh world teacher. Um I was reading recently around, you know, about meditation was very old tradition by the time the Buddha came along already. The earliest depictions of meditation about 5,000 BCE. But then the earliest depictions of pretty much anything is about 5,000 BCE. Right? That's the earliest, like the early Bronze Age, that's when communities first started really settling down. There was some agriculture, uh, there was um you know started to form early early societies around that time. And both in words and in art, uh meditation was depicted 5000 BCE. So if you go to the time of the Buddha in 500 BCE, there's already 4,500 years of meditation practice in that area beforehand. That's longer in time from the Buddha than the Buddha is in time from us now. It's only 2,500 years away from us now. So a long tradition. And in that area of like the Ganges Valley in northern India, um there was an enormity of spiritual teachers and practices centered around uh meditation. That that was the era that the Buddha uh was born and and lived in. Said that his clan, the the Shakya clan, you know, if you see if you look on a map or an ancient map, then they're really up in the corner, again, right up against the mountains of uh north northeastern India. But they they'd come into northeastern India through the mountains. They were people who used um two-wheeled chariots or two-wheeled carts to transport their goods or their their, or I'd like to think that maybe the elderly got a right to. Maybe they didn't, depends on the culture. Right? But they would drag these drag these carts and chariots. Imagine bringing those through the um Himalayas or through the foothills of the Himalayas. So you see the root word of you know, of dukkha, when it says, it literally means a stuck axle wheel of a an axle with a bad a wheel with a bad axle. That's the root of this word dukkha. They were very familiar with the and what that really meant. Imagine you're pulling your you know your life's possessions and everything that your family relies upon and your wheel doesn't turn right. That's a major, major pain, a major frustration. So that's the root of the word dukkha. And when they came into living in that uh area of northern India, um they entered a world where there was a very rigid stratified caste system in that in the Hindu tradition of the day. And apparently the Shakyas were a little on the outs or distrusted in that system because they still had the practices of uh tree worship and uh snake worship. Right? You see this in Buddhist iconography. If you if you look back, you see sometimes the Buddha's depicted with a cobra behind him, like on the front, and you see references to the Naga king in some of the writings. These are like old snake, some some some old old old old traditions there, you know. If you wanted to um start off a tree and and snake worship religion, this would be a good place because we've still got a lot of trees and the snakes are now just coming out. But you know, rattles are best appreciated at a distance, so don't get too close to them. Um coming from that, you know, it's it's it's fascinating. Coming into this this caste system, a rigid way of understanding the world, the Buddha was uh truly an activist and and truly um led a rebellion against the uh standard dogmatic practices of the day. An extraordinary person. And yet what he built in terms of his way of teaching is drawn from the actual experience of the real as experienced by a human being, not relying on philosophies or ideas around the world, but based on actual human experience of this life. So Buddhism in that sense is an extraordinarily clear lens for looking at the fact of dukkha, the fact of how we suffer, and through illuminating that, finding ways to alleviate dukkha and suffering, to let go of unnecessary suffering, because it turns out that most of our suffering as a human being is actually unnecessary. It's added by our upside-down view, what the Buddha called upside-down view. You know, we've spent most of a week sitting in uh glorious spring weather in the mountains of Southern California, blessed with blue skies, bird song. And yet, within those extraordinarily beneficial causes and conditions, have you at some point found yourself suffering? As a human being, yes. So in our in our Quran, it begins with the Buddha doing what the Buddha does, which is going to give a talk that day to the community. Tradition which has been upheld and maintained these many centuries. Somebody comes into the teaching seat and shares some words in an effort to help catalyse uh each person's own realization. Because the Dharma isn't something that's taught or given from one to another, it's not something that can be shared in that way. Each one of us has to do the work for ourselves, each one of us has to run the basis of our life in our own unique way. What's required really is persistence and effort and not giving up. You know, most of the practice could be summed up with, you know, most of Dokasan could be summed up with carry on, carry on, just carry on. This is a practice of carrying on, carrying on the activity of looking, learning, exploring, finding for ourselves. And as for human beings that we are, it's it's it's been found to be effective to do this for long hours. Right? It's like we really need that session is set up in a certain way in order to uh to make us stretch, in order to like raise the temperature, to um apply the pressure. So that through concentration and through through focused effort, the deeper work of transformation, the deeper um realization can have the best conditions possible in its favour in order for that to take place. And then we have the talks, of course, you know, in some places they they don't do that. Antaj for Antanji Atanji with um Shohaku Okamura's teacher, Uchiama Roshi Okamura's teachers, his temple in Japan. They they don't in session they won't have Dhamma talks or Dog-san, it's just sitting all the way through. What he would call no no toys, no toys approach. Right? There's always somebody out there sitting a stronger session, you know? There's always somebody out there getting up earlier or struggling mightier more mightily, right? But we're here, and this is this is our session, this is the practice that we're engaged in with a schedule that that that we have. But we're all engaged in the in the same effort to realize what Manchushri calls here the Dharma King's Dharma. The Dharmaking's Dharma. And so he invites he invites the or introduces the Buddha in somewhat dramatic fashion here. Right? It's like seeing, you know, if ever I was looking with my son, it's like a my son's home from college, and usually go see a couple of the big movies in the summer that come out. You know, it's something we've always done together since he was he was small. So you like you see the trailers now coming out for the summer movies. You get the trailer and you're like, oh yeah, looking forward to that one, you know, and think about when we might be able to go see it in a couple of weeks. You know, in something of the same way, Manjushri like here's the trailer, you know, he unveils the trailer here and says, when you realize the Dharma King's Dharma, the Dharma King's Dharma is just as is. And everyone's waiting. And here comes the Buddha, and the sound imposter's struck. And the Buddha descends from the platform and leaves. Would you be uh disappointed in that? I mean what can the what can the Buddha really say though at that point? Manjushri says it all in in one say it three times fast sentence. When you realize the Dharma King's Dharma, the Dharma King's Dharma is just as is. This is our practice, this is the heart of Zarzen. This perhaps is why Tendalwanchi, who was a great luminary of the Soto school, puts this first in a book of 100 cases, where he knowingly wanders in now to muddy the waters, perhaps. Right? But in the first case, it just says when you realize it, then it's just as is. And if we haven't yet grasped the truth or understood the truth of that statement, 99 more cases will help elucidate this. But right from the beginning, he says, when you realize it, it is just as is. In the preface, close the gate and snooze. That's how to treat a superior person. But reflection, abbreviation, elaboration, everything, all these other methods are used for middling and inferior ones. Yeah, I I you know I would confess to being somewhere in the middling and an inferior camp. In that sense, right? Don't we all uh enter the practice as as uh beginners trying to find our way, trying to find our way in Seshin, trying to better understand. And for most, right, I guess for all, it is a uh difficult and um the path unfolds in ways that cannot be known. The path unfolds in in uh in a unique manner for each one. But the way to the path, the opening of the gate, is always this just as is, it's always this now, which can easily become such a cliche in Zen. Just as is, or the or just this. You know, you say that, and it can be poison to the wrong for the wrong ears to say it is just as is. He adds for words manjushire, when you realize it, it is just as is. Before you realize it, those words don't land. But our practice, you know, Zazen clearly lies at the the heart of our of what we do. We come in, each one of us, arrange for body, and uh sit down, and then the bell, the bell is struck. Early in our practice practice, or maybe late in our practice, we may be using uh meditation technique. These techniques are very old. I read a reference in the other book of Serenity and the other translations of the practice of counting to ten. I'm like, oh wow, they were talking about that then. I thought maybe that came in later. No, the practice of counting to ten was like a well-worn practice a couple of thousand years ago. You know, we have the technique counting, following, um, feeling the body, whatever, you know, whatever this approach to meditation. But Zhao Zen is not meditation. It looks like meditation from the outside. You sit, you you look around, and people seem to be engaged in meditation. But meditation is involved is a practice and an approach and some method, a method. But Dharma King's Dharma, just as is, is uh both before and beyond method. Never lacking, never obscured, always available, easily missed. But do we realise that? Is that is that realised? Is that realised now? Often in in sitting, we can fall into the the the pit of um the narrative, the personal, the the me-i narrative of being the most uh pernicious of all. Somehow that I me that likes to comment on the world and on the circumstances and uh everything that's going on, right? That that one continues to play. I don't know, maybe for you that one turned off on Tuesday, and you've just been sitting in a somadic bliss for several days of no thought and no nothing no problem. Sit here all day. But usually for most people that that story, that commentary, uh continues. Continues. And sometimes it's taken as that is you know, we look at that, and this is where some subtlety comes in. Is that actually a problem or not? Is that a problem or not? Often people we take it as a problem. I've been sitting for days, I've been practicing for years, and still I've got all of these thoughts going on, I've still got all of this dissatisfaction. I'm not doing it right. Some I'm missing something. He's getting it over there, I'm not getting it. You know, what's wrong with me? Right? But the issue is not the me, I construction of that narrative continuing, whether that's like you know, whether that's occurring or not. What's important is what is your identification or attachment to that narrative and that idea, that that unfolding of me, I. Because me, I is always commenting on the world, commenting on me and the people in it, trying to safely navigate it and stay alive and prosper. That's like really hardwired into our into our very genetics. Keep, you know, keep. If you sit here and you, well, okay, I've been told, look at the room, notice the people, don't worry about thoughts. Wait, this is super boring, nothing is happening in the room. They're all just right, it's like we come up against this obstacle, perhaps, of our the way the brain perceives that says this is neither a threat or interesting, therefore cease involvement, and instead turn and try to find something entertaining or threatening, doesn't matter. Negative or positive, doesn't matter. Something to chew on, something to be involved in. That's that this is like hardwired into the into the me I. If this is all very boring and there's nothing happening, well, let me think up some stuff that happened 10 years ago and and see if you know I need to chew on, I can chew on that a little bit more. But when we do that, when we just sort of re-attach or cling to that, to our conditioning, cling to that story of myself and the world, then you just perpetuate those causes and conditions. And in fact, we're just feeding stuff into that, feeding stuff into the machine, adding and adding. So Zazen, in this sense, is not adding, not taking away. The human being is always immersed in attachment and aversion, from the first breath to the last, always attached and always averse to things. That is the nature of that is the human condition. This is where dukkha arises. But the Dharma King's Dharma, just as is the essential practice of just sitting, directly experiencing the world, reality, whatever we erroneously name it, requires the dropping off of a letting go of attachment and aversion. But it is not dropping off and letting go of attachment and aversion to exchange the confused preferential state for the new wonderfully vast, empty, illuminous state. Right? That's just trying to trade up to better conditions. And we can fall for that in meditation or in practice. Things become quiet, things become still, things become oh, this is better, this is better. But if it's still condition, if it's conditional, it's impermanent. Right? Often people will sit seshin and then go back to the world, and it's just like, oh man, you know, now it all I lost it. I lost that samadhi, I lost that mind, now I'm back in the to and the fro. Right? But it's something much deeper, much more immediate, which is not bound by this conditional. You know, Dogan talked about Zhao Zhen as unconstructedness in stillness. Dogan was uh an admirer and used to write ins and the work of Tendo Wanxi in the same, not directly in the same lineage, but both in the in the Soto lineage. He would be in China not just a couple of decades or a few somewhere around the time this was written. He was very much informed by this school, this what we call now the Soto school, right? This just sitting, this immediacy of experience which is not bound up or attached to something conditional, whether it, you know, including it being quiet and concentrated. This is the great shift in in Zar Zen, and then the extension of this shift in Zar Zen to all activities of day and night. The me, I self is always involved in the karma of a world, is always rise and fall in the causes and conditions, picking and choosing, preferring and comparing. It's not that that one has to be extinguished or turned off. Who is the one who, when you sit, experiences and allows thought to unfold, to be as it is, to appear as it is, to appear as it is, just as the sound of a squirrel running across the roof of the Buddha Hall appears, or the sunlight coming in the window, and yet finds no fault or particular interest in that stream of consciousness, that stream of thought. Who is it that can just allow that one, allow that to play, to unpack? But you know, as a human being, often you can allow the more sort of banal chop of thinking about this and that, thinking about when the session's over, or what somebody said to me yesterday, or or vote, that can drop off. But then often the deeper patterns for real deep entanglements of the way that we hold life, the deeper distortions, the way that we describe self, the ones that are deep down in the pit of the belly, you know, those are the ones that then start to that starts to untangle. Those things come up. And often that happens later in session. You start to really get to the nitty-gritty, get down to something that's deeper. At this time, at this time in session, very important to really double down in terms of one's effort and single-pointed approach. Single pointed approach in that when you come in for zarzen, just do zarzen, whatever your practice is. Sounds absurdly simple, but just do that through the entire block. Walk, just walk. Right? So that when you leave for Buddha hall, it's like leaving the gym after a hard workout, only you know, spiritually. It's like because you've made great effort in here to be voss, to not fall for the siren call of story and narrative, an idea on placing yourself, how you're doing and where you're going and what this means. What can the the Buddha say? He's extraordinary in that he taught for so many years and did more than just, of course, give give Dharma talks. I was reading that again the culture that he was in during the time. Um, there was an enormous, like, there's a lot of sacrifice going on. You know, humans are far, you know, in so many cultures, and it's just like, oh, here they are with a sacrifice. You know, it's like you like in those Vedic cultures of the time, they would sacrifice animals a lot, and sometimes hundreds or even thousands at a time for like for major festivals. And he was appalled by that. You think what just see like the heart you know of like of compassion at that time and and the courage to go against that, to say, no, this life, this life is involved in doing the least harm possible. This ahimsa, the qualities, you know, these qualities that he brings out in Buddhism, to courageously say that, and yet that doesn't come from some ideas about life, but rather from his deep realization of life, of how things actually are. You know, as you see in, as we practice, you see how greed, anger, and ignorance arises in our own heart. It does for me over and over and over. You know, somebody was telling me some time ago and they they confessed to really hating somebody, and and I just said, Oh, you know, I really hate.
SPEAKER_00And they were like, What?
SPEAKER_02Thinking he must be beyond that at this point, right? Practiced so many years, got the brown robe, doesn't hate things. Oh no, I hate things. Like, because I'm a human being, right? We're we're all involved in those things, but it but it's like, do they run you? Do they run you? Do they distort you into committing the next negative action? Right? This this heart of Zazen is so important because it's always the blank slate, it's always the fresh beginning, it's always coming back to neutral, coming back to the place as just as is. The world is this way. This is your life. Maybe your one life, right? Who knows? We have all kinds of stories, even in Buddhism. This is what's going to happen after we die. Okay, maybe. Who knows? But by some curious churn of these causes and conditions, here you are. Here everyone is. And they're wonderful causes and conditions. Right? To think about like all the causes and conditions of the world to be sat in an early May sunshine in California doing a Zen retreat, you won the lottery. Each of us has that responsibility then for like the causes and conditions that we are. Like, how do I then go forward? How do I, how do I live this life? How do I help unfold this life? It's not it's not in my experience, it's not so useful to spend a lot of time in a rearview mirror about why or how it went down. Right? Looking looking back. The past is is useful in some ways, of course. It helps to with experience and to inform the present. But as I'm sure you've noticed by now in Zen, there is a heavy emphasis on the present, the present experience. But this present experience that includes the past and includes future. But when you look to the past, there's no life there, the life is now. And when you look out to the future, there's an olife there, the life it's now. So this heavy emphasis is here now, and the no escape from here now. But this here now is the Dharma is extraordinarily generous in second chances. To say, okay, you screwed it up to this point. That's okay, we've all screwed it up to. However, look now, here you are. This is this all of this is here. The world is here, you're here. Everything worked out, everything has worked out fantastically. It's beautifully woven together with warp and woof, as it says, right, to bring you to this point of realization now. This point of experience. But if you compare that realization now with one that you want, one that you can imagine, one that you yearn for, it won't match up. If you compare that to something in the future, it won't match up, or to somebody else's, or to some idea. It doesn't have to be explained, it doesn't have to be grasped even intellectually, this realization. Just just but really, particularly again at this point in Sashin, just pour yourself and dissolve yourself into the real. And accept, allow and accept it all to be just as is. All of the content, all of the causes and conditions, all at once. Welcomed in. That's the hair's birth difference between heaven and earth. In the verse, he says, Do you see the true manner of the primal stage? This is what I'm clumsily, you know, my own way trying to point to. It's like, and ask that question Do you see the true manner of the primal stage? This is the primal stage. Spoiler alert, right? This is the primal stage. Do you see the true manner of it? And if we're like, well, and then the ideas and opinions around the true manner of the primal stage or our or our mistaken views of what the Dharma means fill in, then we don't. Mother Nature goes on weaving, warp and woof, right? It's like the vertical and the horizontal. Mother Nature is just, and look, look all around. Spend some time outside. Maybe get a nap if that's your predisposition in the afternoon. But then I encourage, like, spend some time and just look outside. Look at the trees, look at the sky, look at the mountains. That remain completely undisturbed by our current causes and conditions. Just Mother Nature just goes on weaving. Now it's spring. Nothing can be done about the spring gods outflowing or Manjushri's outflowing. I looked up to try and find a reference to him as a spring god, apparently. In Nepal, Manjushri is credited with there was a valley, looked like a great valley to live. The only problem was it had a lake in the centre. And Manjushri kindly put his sword through the mountain and drained the lake. Right? Probably an earthquake. Whether you call that Manjushri or not, and then it drained out and it left this beautiful fertile plain. You know, so about that was the reference that I found there. But it says like nothing can be done about Manjushri's outflowing, or somewhere it says, nothing can be done about his leaking. Whether you could say leaking or outflowing. Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, is exactly Manjushri. Has to be Manjushri. He can't help himself. He just completely has to be Manjushri. He just can't get up and just hit the block and sit down. Right? He says for Dharmaki, he is the bodhisattva of wisdom. He has to say to everybody, here it is in a sentence. This is wisdom. He can't be anybody but Manjushri. And each one of us, you can't be anyone else than who you are. And that's hard. When you put that out in the world, and I would do that often with, you know, having difficulties with people, and it's like they can't be any anyone else than who they are. And I'm just like, oh, but they should be. They really should be different than what they are. But they're not. Manjushri is exactly Manjushri. It's nothing can be done about it. Nothing can be done about you. You have to be exactly who you are. But that's wonderful. What a wonderful. There's so much freedom and it's an invitation in that. To really swallow down whole and be exactly who you are. But we have to be careful with that. Because if don't be who you think you are. Right? We have that one who I think I know who I am. And I think I know who they are. It's always wrong. It's always partial. It's always incomplete. It's always a story. The one who you are is just as is, without name, without history, without definition. That is the one that we realize. Have that one be real. And then this unfolding of me, I, and people in the world, sure, that one that is not forgotten. But our dealings with the world can be tempered and informed by this non-attachment to these causes and conditions, preferences. We learn that great shift of letting go of preferences and the value system that our mind imposes on reality. Drop that off in Zazen. Make it real in our activities, and then it's apparent, it's there. You see it. In the midst of picking and choosing, there is also no picking, no choosing. That possibility remains open. In dealing with South and Over, we understand it's always partial. The opposite is also true. It's never complete. This practice of Zen. The practice of Zazen. This long history of tradition, of meditation, of looking into our nature. In order to find the truth, the truth of it. Not a truth that can be grasped or known, not like I found the truth. And then you know, write it down. It can't be known in that way. It's this unfolding truth. It's always now and always one step in front. Again, genuine gratitude for for your efforts. I, you know, I reflect on the sessions that I've done here and the few that I did before I that I came here, and many have been very tough. I never look forward to session. I don't think, oh, session's coming on Sunday. Can't wait. You know, usually I go in with a sense of dread. You know, just oh no, I've got to do something. Here we go, session. Because I know it's it's difficult for me. For me, for me, I. But on the in the other sense, it's not difficult at all. There's no difficulty here. There's no problem here. There's no problem here. So please let's um let's continue to do our best. It benefits uh each of us, and it benefits those in our sphere of activity. You know, as I like fond of pointing out, it's uh you you could have the worst session ever in history, back to Tenderwanchi. Worst session experience ever. But the fact that you're sitting there and showing up and practicing, that supports me. It supports the people to your left and right, it supports the person opposite you. And who knows, maybe someone here is the next token. It'll reach tens of thousands or millions of people. So it's not just about, it's not about this one. It's about this one. It's this collective endeavor, it really is, for the benefit of all. So uh thank you for making such an effort.