Good morning. Isn't it amazing we're all here? Or some facsimile of who we were is here. Anyway, here we are, whoever it is. Someone we haven't yet met, someone we don't know quite who it will be.

[01:07]

Last night I went to attend the opening of the doll show in Berkeley at the Nexus Gallery. This is the show where a number of people, women have spent the last year making a doll, a life-size figure with ceramic feet and ceramic hands and face and then a whole body structure with dowels and cotton batting for the flesh and then a skin of canvas and then costumes. So today I feel kind of like maybe I'm a doll. I just made one from last night, I have my costume on. Because I didn't look like this last night, I've made myself over. So I would look like, a little bit like a Zen teacher. I don't have quite the right hairdo for it, but you know, I have the right costume.

[02:36]

But the figures, the dolls are very striking. The images are striking and then there's often, most of them have a story that goes along with it, which is something, because this has taken a year and Cassandra Light, who teaches the course, understands art as something that comes from the depths of people's lives and it doesn't take, it's not something elite or some special group of people, but something that comes out of ordinary life and ordinary people and from the depths of their lives and art is a way to work on or explore or enter into and make real the inner world. And so there's a lot of process work during the year of finding out what's going on in my life. And oftentimes the figure, the people making the dolls start with the feet

[03:44]

and at that point, at the beginning of the year, they don't know who is this doll. They might have some idea, but they don't really know, often until like about two weeks ago, after 10 months. And then it's only when they start assembling it and then finding clothes for it, like what clothes to find. And then it's, so it's often not until very late, they find out who is this person. So one of the dolls that struck me was one that was a grandmother and it said, she said in the story, when she was a little girl, she wondered, uh, one day she came into the kitchen when she was four or five and she said, where are father's parents? Why aren't they here? And someone, her father, mother said,

[04:46]

the Nazi bastards killed them. And she knew never again to ask that question because there was so much pain around it. And so she's been waiting all these years to meet her grandmother. And she didn't realize she had been working on the grandmother until finally the grandmother was there and this doll. That's pretty nice, don't you think? Yeah. But I was also struck by, right next to the grandmother was the bag lady Bodhisattva who had on a sweatshirt that said, madness takes its toll.

[05:49]

And she had six arms, like, you know, some of the Buddhist deities. One of her right arm's hands was a left hand, but it was on the right. You know, the thumb was this way. Somehow she'd ended up, I guess, making four left hands and only two right ones. I don't know. And she had a knife to cut through delusions and she had some blessing scarf to offer to people. And then there was all this litter around her, styrofoam cups and paper bags and newspaper things and the little things out of the newspaper. And the one that struck me was up in the corner. This was in a little kind of, well, not so little, but a box. And up in the corner was a little newspaper clipping from, in the Chronicle, you know, there's a section called, I think it's called Personals. It's in the main news section somehow. But it's kind of a little bit of a taste of the National Enquirer in the Chronicle.

[06:52]

You know, it's their concession to that genre, sort of. And then there was a quote there from Kurt Vonnegut. And there was a picture of Kurt. And it said, people are, we're all demoralized animals. And what we have trouble admitting is that life is so painful. We're not, we don't really care whether it goes on or not. That's why there's so few people eager to save the planet. That really struck me, because I have that feeling, you know, I feel like this is so hard. How does anybody do it, you know? And I'm a spiritual person. I've been practicing meditation, and if it's hard for me, it must be really hard for, you know, other people. And how does anybody ever do it? You know, how does anybody ever kind of

[07:56]

decide to go on? I mean, somehow I've decided to go on. I don't quite know why, you know. There's not really any basis for it, right? Like, it's going to get better. Things are getting better and better every day and every way. I don't know. I don't have that kind of optimism, you know. And it just seems like painful things come up over and over again, you know, and they keep coming up. They don't, it's not like you could put all that, you know, painful stuff behind you. And a lot of it is like the grandmother, right? You know, where is, where is grandmother? Where is mother? Where is father? Where is the person I would like to be? How come I haven't met him yet? Where is he? How come I haven't met her?

[09:00]

How come I'm this person that I find, you know, distasteful? How come, why are there these feelings that are so strong and so overwhelming? And so much like I have no control over them. You know, anger and frustration and anxiety. And it's just like, it's sort of like this, you know, a storm. So there's a flash flood. Like, wow, where did that come from? And things are, you know, there's things are really, uh, the part of the pain is that things are so changeable and unstable. Just like the earthquake. And there's no ground, no basis. How would I decide what to do? What's, what's best? You know, and then it would be nice if I could, you know, I'd really like it if I could find,

[10:08]

if I would, could know what to do ahead of time that nobody could ever criticize or object to. Or question or put me down for, you know, and I could just do that, right? And then, you know, nobody could kind of throw anything at me or, you know, make fun of me for it, you know, because that would be okay. You know, that would be the thing to do that was beyond reproach and beyond question. But no, I get to do things and then everybody gets to say, well, where was that at? And, uh, you know, uh, I don't think that's appropriate, you know. And especially for you, who's a Zen priest, you know, and you should be more compassionate or, you know, and there's all this kind of stuff, you know. And, uh, and then people, you know, and then, um, there are these times when, as a, uh, people will come to me or if I'm,

[11:12]

if I'm leading meditation, you know, and then people want to know, uh, in meditation, like, well, how, what, what, what do I do with anger? What do I do with anxiety? What do I do with, you know, depression? Sometimes I feel like when people ask those questions, you know, it's kind of like really, uh, it's very interesting, but I kind of, I kind of, uh, uh, try to sort of size up the person, but a lot of the time I feel like, I wonder like, where is the question coming from? Because it, it feels a lot like, oftentimes like people saying, well, what should I do with anger so that I don't really have to experience it? How can I deal with it so I don't really have to have it around? Or anxiety, right? How can I deal with anxiety so I don't have to be anxious, so I don't have to relate to anxiety, so I don't have to have it in my life,

[12:13]

right? And it doesn't seem to be as simple as that, does it? Huh? It seems like the process is a bit more painful than that, doesn't it? And it might take a while, just like it took someone many years to meet her grandmother in a whole lifetime. I mean, half a lifetime or something, right? Until grandmother emerged out of clay and cotton batting. A friend of mine, um, in another week or so, um, I'm doing, I agreed to give a talk about eating awareness for, um, you know, uh, theoretically anyway, for people who have problems with chronic

[13:19]

overeating. Um, someone invited me to do this and so I said, okay. And, uh, it's pretty interesting, you know, because it, uh, the people that I've noticed, I've done cooking classes sometimes from people who have, who tend to have chronic problems overeating. And on the whole, those people are the least interested in food and the taste of food of any people I've ever done cooking classes for. It's very interesting, isn't it? You'd think that they would be really interested in the taste of food and that that's what attracts them to food, but it's actually the opposite. Food is something to, that food, the food disappears from the universe and everything else does too. You know, the pain disappears too. Only the pain comes back later and there's

[14:22]

an extra pain, which is the pain of having done this to oneself to have made, you know, to shut up the pain, to shut up the anxiety and to shut up the anger and all of those other painful things. So eating awareness is, could you please try to make an effort to pay attention to what you eat, actually experience it, taste it, you know, the sweetness, the sourness, the saltiness. That's what food is. That's what life is. I told a friend of mine about this and she said, Oh, I used to have problems overeating. She came to Zen Center in the early seventies and spent many years at Zen Center and now she's a professor at UC Berkeley and it took her about six years

[15:26]

of practicing Zen and also she kept, she started keeping finally an eating notebook so that she could, and after about six years, she finally found that she didn't have this kind of problem anymore and it kind of snuck up on her. I thought that was very interesting because, you know, and I, she, she shared with me the introduction to her eating notebooks and she said that I could use this, so, you know, in my talks or wherever. So I feel like it's all right to share with you, but the most powerful thing I found in the introduction, she said, you know, she'd had, she'd spent so many years. She spent so many years looking to somebody else for the answer.

[16:27]

You know, Zen teacher, Nyogen Senzaki, who came to this country in the early century, early part of the 20th century and had a small sitting group for many years in Los Angeles. And before he died, he said, friends in the Dharma, these are my last words. Trust in your own head. Don't put any false heads above your own. And then moment after moment, watch your step carefully. Those words always struck me. And this person decided, you know, just like that, she decided she'd been going to the Zen teacher, you know, what shall I do? She'd been in therapy. What should I do? And the therapist finally after two years, you know, one of her therapists finally after two years said, I'm not going to work with you anymore. You have too much resistance. Isn't that sort of, I think sometimes that's the difference between sort of good therapists

[17:35]

and bad therapists or good teach, you know, Zen teachers and bad Zen teachers. Because there are some Zen teachers, you know, or therapists who will take some of the blame, so to speak, you know, and then there are the ones who put it all on you, like this therapist. Well, we've worked for two years and I'm sorry, but you have too many problems. And you're not really interested in finding the truth. Sorry about that. So I'm not going to work with you anymore. And rather than saying, I haven't found out yet how to work with you in a way that would be of help to you, right? That it kind of acknowledges some degree of like, we're in this together. And I trust that you're really, you know, interested in finding your way out of this pain and the way to live with the pain. I trust that that's actually your interest. And I haven't found the way to help you realize that. So why don't we stop working together for a while? Maybe we can pick it up again later.

[18:39]

That to me, you know, it's some kind of acknowledgement of the shared situation, but in some way, you know, it ended up helping it, right? Because at some point she realized, she said, the Zen teachers weren't going to help me. The therapist wasn't going to help me. And I realized I'd have to figure this out for myself. With my own limited resources and coming out of my own experience. And I had no reason, she said, I had no reason to believe that I could do this. But I decided to do it anyway. Isn't that powerful? To decide to sort it all out, out of one's own experience, without any sense, you know, a reason to believe that it's possible to do. There's no evidence that it's possible. She decided to do it anyway. Then she started writing her eating notebooks and writing down

[19:45]

her observations, noting her experience. And it didn't matter whether it's an experience of, you know, where she successfully doesn't eat or it's an experience where she does eat, she would still observe what happens when she overeats. She began to make it all conscious. In other words, to be conscious of the pain. So that's a powerful decision to make. It's really the fundamental decision to, that is associated with entering the path, you know, in a kind of a classical, classical Buddhism. That kind of decision, I will find out what I need to find out, even though I have no reason to believe that I can do that. I'll do it anyway. Anyway, she said, if you tell these people this, I want you to know that if you tell people this,

[20:51]

when I had problems overeating, if anybody told me to just be conscious before I came to this decision on my own, I would have wanted to strangle them. Because it's not really that simple an answer, is it? It doesn't tell you how to do something where you don't have to experience the anxiety or you don't have to experience the anger or you don't have to experience your greed. Here's what to do and you'll, you won't have to have that pain. So, will you have that pain?

[22:08]

Another one of the dolls was a Japanese figure, a kind of, that had a very much a doll-like face. And in the description it said, at the end of her description of the doll, and what happened in the process of her work, she said, now I understand that beauty is the beast set free. And the beast is the pain, but the pain is the depths of our life. Where else can we go? To meet our grandmother. I've often liked, you know, Niyogin Senzaki's words, don't put any false heads above your own. We all, you know, we all know those heads, right? Who say, well, what's wrong with you? If you'd just done what I told you to, you wouldn't have this problem. And there's sort of mom or dad and there's the parental mind and then,

[23:25]

you know, various, you know, you know, you can't, [...] minds telling us what to do. And the therapist and the Zen teacher and, you know, we think, well, if I could just do it, you know, but somehow it doesn't quite work like that, does it? I was reading another Zen text recently and I was very struck because I found the same thing, you know, that Niyogin Senzaki said. The Zen teachers have been saying it, you know, for a long time. It was in other words and Niyogin Senzaki says things in a very matter-of-fact way. But here I read, you know, two Zen teachers were asked what to do in daily life and one of them said, I don't talk about what to do in daily life. I only ask that your vision be true. And the other one said, each step in daily life should tread on that question.

[24:31]

Each step should be an expression of that question, what to do. Isn't that like being in the dark and then not knowing what to do and feeling your way along? And you don't know what you'll encounter and you'll have to end up hanging out with many experiences that you didn't intend to hang out with. Isn't it amazing? So what does it mean that your vision be true?

[25:36]

So today I want to offer you something like, grandmother is already here. Or, you know, we say in Zen, grandmother doesn't come or go. Grandmother is already here. Sometimes you'll have to make a doll to find that out. There may be various ways to find that out, to come to that vision, but you can also just have that vision or you can take it on faith or you can decide to believe in it. Grandmother is already here. Grandmother doesn't come or go. And step by step, you know, treading on the question, uh, where is grandmother? This is also meeting grandmother. I am walking with grandmother. I am grandmother walking.

[26:46]

Those are all that question, huh? So you can try it out. Step by step, step after step. This is meeting grandmother. Grandmother is already here. Grandmother doesn't come or go. I am grandmother walking. Grandmother is meeting me. I am meeting grandmother. And I think once, once this woman, now that she's made this doll, I think she'll do this now. Don't you? She won't have to worry anymore. Where is grandmother? And now she knows grandmother doesn't come or go. For her, it meant making a doll. For some of us, you know, it means, uh, sitting meditation. And in sitting meditation, we find out grandmother's already here.

[27:55]

We find, uh, at some point there's the mind that is grandmother too. We can't tell which is who, who is which. So in this way, you know, meditation is, uh, you know, can have this same kind of healing or resolving kind of effect. Because we let go of things and we let go of, what is it we let go of? Believing in the objective reality of things. Grandmother was killed by the Nazi bastards. But all this time thinking about grandmother, where is she? Where else would she be? And she's right here. Someone wondering where she is.

[29:01]

So it's not always easy to let go of, you know, objective reality. But this is what meditation is about. It's also what, you know, recently I went to a little bit of an improvisation theater class. And one of the things in theater is same kind of thing, letting go of objective reality. Someone says it's raining and you don't say, no, it's not. You don't deny somebody else's reality. You just say, you can, if you want, you say it's sunny. Raining and sunny. It's another kind of world. They are both here together. I found that very interesting. That's what happens in meditation too. Grandmother isn't here. Grandmother is here. Both are true. Grandmother doesn't come or go. But if we believe one and, you know, if we believe one and as soon as we believe something is true,

[30:17]

and then everything else has to be false, you know, and then we are the prisoner of the truth. We are the prisoner of this objective reality that we believe is true moment after moment. And then we're very stuck. So somehow, whether it's, you know, through theater class or making a doll or doing meditation or just saying things with some freshness, we let go. We can let go once in a while of the hold, our hold on the truth. So somehow, whether it's, you know, through theater class or making a doll or doing meditation or just saying things with some freshness, we let go. We can let go once in a while of the hold, our hold on objective reality,

[31:23]

of at least on our, you know, of our descriptions of what objective reality is. And then in Buddhism generally, there's a distinction between relative reality and absolute reality or imaginary reality and absolute reality. And that absolute reality in a certain sense is just that there is no, there is no correspondence between imaginary reality and absolute reality. Don't you think so? But it means grandmother is here, doesn't it? Thich Nhat Hanh, you know, often teaches the, Thich Nhat Hanh, you know, is Vietnamese Zen teacher and he's come to Green Gulch and often teaches in this country, lives in France. And many people from here have traveled to France to study with him.

[32:25]

And he often teaches the practice of a smile, a half smile. Is it because there's something to smile about? I don't, I don't know that there's any reason to smile. I used to have that response to people, right? I'm not feeling very happy. Well, what do you have to smile about? I don't have anything to smile about. But he teaches to practice a half smile. And he used to come to Green Gulch and he'd say to us here, because we tend to be so serious at Green Gulch, he'd say, if you're not smiling, you're wasting your time. And I don't know if he exactly was smiling when he said that. He seemed pretty serious about it. But he may have had a slight smile, I couldn't see.

[33:30]

But why is that? Do you practice smiling? Do you wait for something to smile about? Do you think there'll come a time when all the pain of the world will go away and now you can smile? So in terms of objective reality, you know, that you, you know, we might believe in, there's no reason to smile. You have a little momentary relief and then you suddenly ask, is that a reason to smile? Maybe so. But this is, so this smiling, you know, is some practice of, you know, disconnecting from, you know, having one's life always, you know, dependent on the circumstances and the belief in objective reality. How else will we do it? I'm not very good at it. You know, I've been practicing for years trying to, you know, practicing smiling. I don't know.

[34:38]

And you know, people then ask him, but suppose you don't feel like smiling. Should you smile anyway? Wouldn't that be insincere? And he says, but, you know, can't you mix hot and cold water? You don't feel like smiling and, and yet you can have, you can regard that feeling with a slight smile. You feel angry, you can regard anger with a slight smile. It doesn't mean you get rid of anger. You know, then you have anger to deal with anger. Like, I am going to obliterate it. Remove it from the universe.

[35:44]

If you do that, you'll also be removing grandmother, right? If you remove the anger, the anger is you and the anger is your grandmother. And the anger is your grandmother. And the anger is, is also love and kindness and warmth. It's not clear what anger is. And if it's just anger, and if you want to find out, you'll have to meet it. And like the beast that is free, you'll find something there, you know, that's beauty. But when we don't meet it, then it's anger. And we believe it to be anger, and we treat it like anger. We believe in that objective reality. Rather than this multiplicity of reality, and the, the changeability of reality.

[36:55]

So another Zen teacher said, when you get up in the morning, from the time you get up in the morning, watch, watch what happens. And whatever you say or do, review it carefully to see where does it come from? Where it comes from? And what makes it all happen? And each of us can do it, can do that kind of activity. We can't, we can't go through our life doing the right thing that nobody can ever question or criticize.

[38:43]

We can't, it's not the point to have some, never have human feelings. The fact that you understand, you know, that one understands and has some detachment from what we think of as objective reality, where we can have a slight smile, a half smile to regard, regarding anger or frustration or anxiety. It doesn't mean that we don't have frustration or anger. We regard it with a slight smile. This way we generate our life more carefully, more consciously. And we meet and know our grandmother, in spite of objective reality that says she's not here. And we meet and know our own heart, the depths of our own heart,

[39:51]

and that things come out of our heart into the world. So the Zen teacher says, if you do this kind of practice, reviewing carefully how things happen, where they come from, what makes it all happen. Eventually, he says, you'll be able to trust your own mind, the truth and purity and ineffable quality of your own mind. Wouldn't that be wonderful, to trust your own mind? And we each do this because we decide to do it, even though there's no reason to think that we can.

[41:00]

And each little moment of observing our consciousness, and each little reminder that reality is not just what it seems, each little moment like that is important then, to look more carefully and more deeply, and to observe oneself over and over. And with some sense, with some true vision that this is the way it should be, the objective reality isn't the whole story. There's infinite virtue and boundless characteristics. So

[42:14]

years ago, when I was studying at Tassajara, I was cooking. And in those days, when we cooked, we also served the food in the meditation hall. And so Suzuki Roshi, we used to serve Suzuki Roshi first. And we all had a great love and respect for Suzuki Roshi, our grandmother. So we served our grandmother very carefully. Once someone asked him in the question and answer ceremony after a week of meditation, what do you feel when I serve you food in the meditation hall? And he said, I feel like you're offering me your entire life, your most precious love.

[44:16]

And it was true. I felt that's what I was doing when I served him food. And it was interesting then to hear him say that he knew that. Later, when he died, it was interesting. I loved watching at the, I forget, you know, it wasn't the funeral per se. It was when we took the body to the funeral home. And before we put the casket with the body into the ovens, everybody offered a flower and put it in the casket. And it was marvelous to see that quality of each person offering their most precious love. Even though, you know, on the other hand, some people are kind of awkward, some people are kind of nervous, some people are kind of timid,

[45:18]

some people are kind of frightened, some people are kind of, you know, forthright, and so on and so on and so on. Everybody is so completely unique. And yet that quality was there in every offering of every flower. So, where is Suzuki Roshi now? Where is our grandmother now? One day I wondered, you know, about that. I noticed, because I would notice I'd served Suzuki Roshi very carefully and then the next person not so carefully. And by the third person, you know, I mean, Zen is about, you know, speed. I mean, there's a certain speed involved in Zen. You know, well, it's true. I mean, there's a certain quality of Zen,

[46:25]

at least the Japanese. You know, we haven't quite caught on to it here. You know, because we have an expression, you know, Zen slow. But traditionally in Japan, at least in the Japanese, if you've ever been to Japan, you know, the Japanese are very energetic and it's just a cultural thing. It's not that it's Zen necessarily, but culturally, you know, when the light turns green, the traffic moves. It's amazing. Here, it's kind of like, you wonder sometimes people are sitting there in their cars and you're sitting back a few cars and you're kind of going like, the light, I thought the light changed. It looks like, looks to me like the light is green. And then it sort of seems to be taking a while, people a while in the cars in front of you to figure out that the light is turning green. And then what that means. Oh, I guess I can, you know, go forward now. Oh, okay. And there seems to be a sort of little gap and, you know, there's this sort of interval time and time here. But in Japan, I noticed the light turns green and boy, the traffic just moves.

[47:28]

And it's sort of like this whole massive traffic goes zoom, you know, and they don't, it's not like they're speeding, but the light turns and the traffic just goes zoom. And it's really phenomenal. You know, and then when the light stops, you know, they stop and then they, if you're turning left or you're not supposed to turn left, they honk at you, you know, like, do the right thing. And they don't let people, you know, driving, you know, you drive the way you're supposed to drive and, you know, and you're supposed to be paying attention and you're supposed to know where to, when to stop and when to go and when you can turn left and when you can't. And, you know, and that's, you know, it's all happening. So, you know, we're supposed to get, so in serving food, you're not supposed to kind of dilly-dally around, right? You're supposed to get down the road. So, why aren't these people helping me, you know? So, I had all kinds of things to be critical of people about and I, and you can, it's a very intimate activity, it turns out, serving people food in silence

[48:30]

in the meditation hall. And you meet somebody very directly and immediately. And you can, you can sense somebody is preoccupied with something or somebody, you know, doesn't really want to take any of the food you're offering, but they, you know, we have a kind of rule that you should take a little bit of everything because traditionally, you know, the original Buddhists, you went out begging for your food and whatever they put in your bowl, that's what you get. You don't pick and choose. So, our sort of version of that in the meditation practices in the, you know, meditation where the food comes to you is take a little bit of each bowl. Don't pick and choose. And so, like, people aren't sure they want that. So, you can tell, you sense something with each person. Or they're kind of anxious or something's happening with them. But Suzuki Roshi, it was always like you come up and you bow with

[49:33]

the food and he would bow and then he'd pick up his bowl and put his bowl out there and never felt kind of, you know, like there's some kind of strategic thinking going on. Like, how do I get more of that in the bowl and less of that? And you never felt any problem about what you're doing. There was this kind of trust. You would offer him the food and he would, you know, and it all, there's just this clarity to it. Then I thought about it some, you know, one day. I don't know how this occurred to me, but one day I kind of thought, like, well, what really is the difference between Suzuki Roshi and all these other people? Is there really some difference or not? Why don't I just treat everybody as though they're Suzuki Roshi? Isn't everybody also Suzuki Roshi? Isn't everybody also my grandmother?

[50:37]

Isn't grandmother already here? Can't I meet grandmother on each occasion? Can't I be grandmother on each occasion? Why don't I be Suzuki Roshi? So I started serving each person more carefully, trying to maintain that same concentration, level of absorption, you know, for each person and level of detachment. Not that I'm ignoring that people have feelings. Not that I'm ignoring that somebody is, you know, greedy or stingy or fussy or, you know, tired or upset or, you know, various things. Not that I'm ignoring that, but at the same time, can I offer them food, you know, carefully, generously, kindly? This is to step out of, you know, our habitual kind of response to things and acknowledge,

[51:49]

you know, this bigger reality. And we each can do this. On one hand, you know, it's called pretend. Right? It's called theater. It's called a doll. On the other hand, it's the depths of your life, you know, in action, manifesting. So I hope you'll find and work on finding step after step some way to acknowledge this, to have your vision be true and tread on this question step after step. How to, what we do in daily life. Well, what we do in the face of the overwhelming pain.

[52:56]

So I appreciate your interest and effort in this regard. Thank you very much. And equally penetrate every being. Welcome to Greenville.

[55:32]

I'm going to make a few short announcements. By the way, the newsletter just came out. That's this. And it's over there on that table. And it lists the events that are coming up in this month and the next month. I'll just mention a few quickly. You know, the classes are starting today. Actually, they started, Norman wanted me to tell you that if you didn't go to the class today, that'd be okay to go next week. There's going to be five of each kind of class. And today at eight was an introduction to Zen, at 1.30 this afternoon, the Mahaprasna Paramita Sutra, which is the sutra about the dying of Buddha. That's at 1.30. At 7.30 this evening, no, on Monday evening, the Book of Serenity, the abbot will be continuing

[56:38]

his teaching of the Book of Serenity, which is 100 koans in the Tang Dynasty. On Tuesday, 7.30, Norman Zatanto, the Atatamsaka Sutra, will be teaching that again. And Thursday evening, Norman and Lien Klinger will be having a class on family practice, how it is to be parents and Buddhists at the same time. Saturday, the 14th, is our traditional one-day sitting, which is an all-day sitting from 5 to 9. And Saturday, the 22nd, is family practice day. Children and parents come together. And the practice period is going to start on October 10th. This is six weeks, mostly residential, and people come and get involved in an intensive meditation, study, and work period. You'll notice that there are applications in the office.

[57:39]

Good morning, I'm Mary Luteen, and I wanted to welcome you on behalf of the lay group that's

[57:57]

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