Good morning. Wasn't it nice to hear a little thunder? We live in the wrong part of the world or something. I've been here now, well, a while. Anyway, what I wanted to talk about today is a subject that seems to come up a lot for people, and it's basically the kind of question of, what shall I do? And there's various versions of it, you know. One is like, well, what shall I do with anger? Or what shall I do with sorrow or grief? And how do I know when I should keep my mouth shut and when I should open it?

[01:05]

And how do I know what to say if I open it? So I wanted to talk a little bit about this kind of question, because it seems to me like, at some point, we have to acknowledge there's not really any answer to these questions. So I'll talk to you a little bit about what I sort of hear in the questions sometimes. And I ask myself these questions too, you know, you have to understand that. So one of the things I hear is like, well, what shall I do with anger without having to really relate to it? And how can I get rid of it without having to really acknowledge it? You know, isn't there some sleight of hand that you Zen people know about? You know, so I don't really have to get angry or be depressed or have grief or sorrow. Don't you know that kind of trick? Would you tell me, please? And then there's another, it also sort of sounds like, you know, what shall I do so that I win?

[02:08]

Or that I get my way? So that I can go on being me, the person that I know and like, but still get the world to treat me better. Like, how can I do that? Would you tell me? Like, you know, I don't really want to change. I want to go on being me, but I would like the world to kind of, you know, acknowledge me better in some way or kind of, you know, be nicer to me and, you know, bring me tea and things and, you know, be nice. It's not very often, you know, I get somebody brings tea, you know, this is, but this is a different kind of space, which I'm going to talk to you about today. Ritual space. And when we come into this hall here, we move into ritual space. When you come into Green Gulch even, we move into ritual space. And then it's sometimes hard for the people who live here, who are in ritual space all the time, and then other people just are sort of coming into their ritual space without seeming to acknowledge that it's ritual space. And people kind of who live here regularly wonder, like,

[03:11]

what are these people doing here? They don't seem to understand the kind of space they're in. So different, we're going to talk more about that, but let me talk a little bit more about, you know, the question, what shall I do? And then there's a kind of version of the question, well, how can, what shall I do so that I can get through life intact or unscathed or blameless? You know, can you tell me the Buddhist way to behave so that at least, even if I get the shit beat out of me, that, you know, I'll be right anyway? You know, I'll have done the Buddhist thing, and I can somehow take some, you know, some assurance or something, at least in the fact that I was right and that I'm blameless, you know, that I'm clean. You know, the world did all that stuff to me, but, you know, I at least did the right thing. And then sometimes we want to know, well, wait a minute now, how can I do it so that, you know, I don't just cave in like that and be right,

[04:13]

but, you know, I still don't want to kind of, you know, bloody too many other people. But I still like to do a little bit better than just sort of eating whatever comes my way. So you can see how this kind of question gets, you know, as we go on, it can get a little more clarified. But it starts out at this sort of funny level. I sometimes have, I've told you sometimes the, I think sometimes the American dream is about happiness is, happiness is never having to relate to anything. You know, that somehow you could sort of move through the world unscathed and not really have to deal with anything troublesome or bothersome. You know, like, it's sort of like the way TVs presented the war in the Middle East, right? It's pretty, not much blood and stuff, you know. So we can kind of move through it without really kind of touching any of that mess. You know, it's very polite in a certain way.

[05:15]

But it's also not, you know, not really touching anything or relating to anything. And we can kind of move along in things and we'll get the world to just kind of, it's just kind of easygoing kind of California, New Age spirituality or something, you know. You can have whatever you want and you don't have to be, have these kind of troubles that ordinary people have and so on. I think it's pretty funny, but I mean, I don't think that's possible, is what I mean. But I have this kind of question all the way from like, walking into the grocery store and there's aisles and aisles and sometimes, like, I've told you this, but, you know, a whole row with all kinds of soap. You know, washing detergent, which one shall I buy? And I get pretty confused. You know, I can stand there and it's this whole ocean of colors and, you know, price tags.

[06:20]

And I find it, being in the market like that, it's kind of, I don't start to not know where I am, you know, what to do, how to act. I start feeling very kind of alone and abandoned, you know, in this. And I was reading a thing a while back where it was about Macy's in New York City and they have oceans of bras and seas of, you know, dresses. And then they have fake log cabins and English writing clubs. And so that you can, and there's different music in different places. And then, and now it's like you can't go to the women's department, you know, you have to go to the cellar or the boutique or the, you don't know where anything is anymore because they have all these funny names for the places. And I was reading this thing and he said in there, you know, everything in Macy's is kind of whispering, just for you, just for you. This is our new age, you know, idea.

[07:27]

But then he said there's an insidious coda that goes along with it, which is, are you sure you belong here? So that's the one that I, you know, I'm getting both those messages, but especially the second one. And I get into the store though, like, no, I'm not. I don't know that I belong here. But it also comes up in, I mean, that's a sort of, you know, silly example, but, you know, what to do in relationships or when something's bothering you or do you talk to somebody or not talk to somebody or, you know, etc. Or work, you know, somebody's bugging you at work or, you know, various things. All these things are going on and what do we do, you know? How do we act? But I want to be careful when we talk about this. I mean, you know, what do we do? We have to look at what is the end of that. You know, do you have some little agenda that you're not saying

[08:29]

when you ask, well, what shall I do? Like, what shall I do so I can make it through intact and unscathed? Or what can I do so that I don't really have to relate to anything and I can just get rid of this thing that's troublesome? You know, what are we asking ourselves when we ask, what shall I do? So, first of all, you know, from, of course, partly from a Buddhist point of view, you know, there's good and bad and there's fortune and good fortune and bad fortune. It's like the Chinese story, which I heard a while back. I forget where I saw it, but, you know, there's a farmer and he's got one horse. He's very poor, but he does have one horse. And it's like, this is the family fortune, the horse, because other than that, it's the crops and you never know when it's going to rain or not rain or flood. And one day, though, the horse disappears. And his neighbors come by and lament to him,

[09:34]

oh, that's too bad about your horse. We heard your horse went away. That's terrible. And he said, well, we'll see. So a few days or a week or so later, the horse comes back and it's leaving the whole herd of wild horses back with it. And so then the farmer now has this whole herd of horses and his neighbors say, geez, that's such great fortune, you know, good for you. Boy, that's, you're really lucky. And he says, well, we'll see. So a while later, his son is out. His son is breaking in the horses, right? So his son is out there riding on one of the horses one day and it throws him off and he breaks his ankle. And he doesn't get it fixed up very well. So he's from then on, you know, he's in terrible pain and he's not getting it fixed. And people say, oh, what a horrible accident, you know. And now he has to limp all the time. Boy, that's never going to heal, you know. And the farmer says, well, we'll see. So, of course, a few months later, the army comes through conscripting young men.

[10:38]

They don't want him. Because he's limping. They don't want, you know, these cripples in the army. So people say, gee, your son is so fortunate. Boy, he doesn't have to go into the army. And the farmer says, oh, well, we'll see. And the story goes on like this, I think, for several more pages, but that's as far as you get the idea. We never quite know. I mean, we just left it up to each of us to say, you know, how can I get my way in the world? And what shall I do to get my way? I mean, that's not the way the world works, right? So this is like the first noble truth in Buddhism. Things don't happen like that. And that's not the point, to try to get our way and get the things that we want and not get the things that we see as misfortune and so on. And a lot of it has to do with where you're positioned, right? I mean, this morning I stopped at a stoplight in San Francisco and it turned red right as I was coming up to it. And I, darn.

[11:44]

You know, I'm trying to get to Greenbelt for a lecture. I tell the universe, right? To no one in particular, right? Don't you understand, light, that I have a mission? You know, I have something to accomplish here. And, of course, the light doesn't pay any attention. But that's pretty funny because, I mean, we're sitting here now and dozens of lights out there, hundreds and thousands of lights out in the world are changing from green to red now. And who cares? But it's only like, you know, our particular juxtaposition to something, you know. And then we go, oh, why are you doing this to me, world? You know, it's pretty funny. Anyway, so that's one side of this sort of answer to what do I do. In a certain sense, you know, we ought to relax a little bit more and not worry quite so much about how things come out and whether it's good fortune or bad fortune

[12:47]

or whether we get to Greenbelt in time or don't and so on. That's easy enough to say, right? Okay, but I'll say it anyway. But then there's this other kind of side to things which is one kind of way we attempt to deal with this is to move into a kind of ritual space. And things are different in ritual space. And we have, here at Greenbelt, we have this hall. On Sundays, it's a hall. And we have the meditation hall. And when you move in, you behave in a certain way. You have to cross the threshold. And at the threshold, you bow. And now you're in ritual space. And things work differently in this kind of space. You know, for one thing, we slow down. We're not rushing anymore in order to sit still. We can stop. You know, we've arrived. We don't have to. You know, we're there. And we slow down. And in this kind of space, it doesn't matter anymore.

[13:49]

We've moved into that space where it doesn't matter whether we're getting what we want. And we have something to do, a way to behave. There's particular forms. You walk in a certain way with your hands a certain way. And you walk quietly. And your steps are not too short and not too long and so on. And then when you get to your cushion, you bow facing your cushion. And you turn clockwise and bow away from your cushion. And there's a posture for sitting. And then we're all in the middle of this form and this way to do something. Do you want to know what to do? Here's what to do. And then good fortune, bad fortune, it comes. And you can say, well, we'll see. You know, today it's a pretty good period of meditation. Tomorrow it's not. Well, we'll see. We don't know what's good fortune in that kind of space. And so we're not anymore aiming to necessarily get through unscathed. In fact, when you get into that kind of space,

[14:50]

you may find it's, you know, you don't, in fact, you kind of tend to come apart. It's very hard to sit still. You know, you can get antsy and agitated and you can have pain and things will start to come up. And all the stuff, you know, all of our baggage, so to speak, will start to kind of tumble out. And it will feel to us as though everybody can see all of our baggage, all of our dirty laundry, and it's spilling out. And I'm sure they're all getting pretty, you know, disturbed by it. Only they've got all their dirty baggage, you know, their laundry and their baggage, and it's spilling out by them too. And you can look around and you can see, well, people are doing, on one hand, everybody's falling apart, but on the other hand, everybody's keeping it together. This is ritual space, where we can fall apart with some structure, in a kind of container. And in that kind of space, we can have a kind of transformation

[15:52]

can take place. But, so that's, in some ways, so that's one way of approaching things. But we get to a new problem then. We start using ritual space, it's pretty good. But then there's, like, there's the possibility that we can over-rely on ritual space. Pretty soon we want to just be in ritual space all the time. Right? When you walk out of this endo, then somebody talks to you, and then you just keep your eyes down and walk along. And pretty soon we forget that now we're not in ritual space. And the extreme is, like, a friend of mine who was married for many years to a, more or less, a kind of Buddhist priest kind of person, and when she wanted to talk to him about something, he'd just do his beads. Excuse me, but I think I'd rather do my beads now than talk to you. This is, like, a kind of, at some point,

[16:54]

the use of ritual space becomes, it becomes, it's just a ritual, and it's not doing its function, and it becomes a way to hide and escape, rather than, you know, something that has its place and its time, and then we move out of it, and in the world we have to act, and we respond to things. Whether it's a person there, or the stuff that's going on in our life, how do we, how am I going to get to work today? How am I going to support myself? And we have to actually do something about these questions. We can't just sit there anymore, you know? So we have to find some way to move from this ritual space into the everyday sort of space. And the problem then we have sometimes, you know, there are those of us then who get overly involved in everyday kind of space, right? And where everything is really important, and you've got to try to make it come out the way you want, and you've got to get your way, you know? And as you know, some of you,

[17:55]

I mean, to the extent that we all, you know, may spend some time in this kind of space, you know, where, you know, that's what happened to me this morning. It happens to me when I drive, you know? I want people to get out of my way, you know? I'm sorry. I apologize. And so then I've completely lost this kind of ritual space where it doesn't particularly matter whether you're here or there, you know? And I've completely gotten caught up in this other side of things, getting my way, getting to where I want to go, you know, arriving at my destination, not getting through unscathed and intact, being right and blameless. It's not my fault I'm late. All those other people were in my way, you know? And so this, there's various stories about this, but the one I like is that fellow who went to Nepal, and he was off someplace, and he was actually kind of,

[18:57]

he was meditating, and he was in seclusion, and he had his bag of brown rice and a few vegetables or something, and then he's doing this, and after a while, he starts hearing, there's a little creek going by, and in the sound of the creek, he starts hearing marching music. Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. Maybe he played in the band in high school. Anyway, he can't get it out of his mind. Once he starts hearing it, all he can hear is marching music, and he can't stand marching music. And he wants to get this to stop, so he meditates on it. Nothing works. He tries to become one with the sound. He tries being kind to the sound, forgiving the sound. Nothing works. So finally, one day, he goes out and starts moving the rocks. Apparently, this is a true story. So this is what we try to do in our lives sometimes.

[19:58]

We want to move the rocks in some stream, and there's not much you can do. And then it's not like after you move the rocks in the stream, you stop hearing marching music, and now you get rock and roll, or who knows what, right? So it doesn't work to go out and move all those rocks in the stream. But that's what we try to do when we get so involved in our everyday life, and we forget there's no balance to it. There's no container at all for it. And we can get pretty hot and irate and worked up. And then when things don't go right, we can get unhappy and discouraged and upset, sorrowful, hurt. So it doesn't quite work to try to just stay in that world

[21:15]

or to move just entirely into ritual space, sort of not really relate to anything in the kind of thinking it's spiritual, or to just be involved in the world like that. And we should have, Buddhism is always suggesting, some middle way, right? The 80s were kind of like the, in some sense, are now we can say are some extreme of the just being in the world type of thing and pushing things to the maximum. And I was reading in the Wall Street Journal the other day that there's a whole school of business people, and I forget what the article was about, but one investment person in Wall Street was quoted as saying, net worth is self-worth. And so then it's important when you, and so people are actually believing that.

[22:17]

We're all sort of at some level. We get hooked into that, that we're as good as our last, if I cook, right? I cook, well then I'm as good as my last meal. If you're in some other kind of work, you're as good as whatever you can, however you grade yourself, your last accomplishment. That's how good you are. So that again is being involved in the world in this funny way that is completely unbalanced. And you can see in that kind of scenario that it's endless, right? If net worth is self-worth, then how much do you need to have some self-worth? Hey, the sky's the limit. You can go endlessly. There's no end. So do you ever get self-worth out of the deal? You get a kind of fictitious self-worth out of the deal. And then even that isn't worth much, right?

[23:21]

And you have trouble believing it, so you have to get more. And you never get the self-worth, and so we're always pushing. This is known in Buddhism, this is the samsara world. Because of this endless quality, never arriving, and having ourselves hooked into this kind of scenario. But the other side is we get hooked into, well, I'm going to do the right thing then. I'm going to behave properly. I'm going to just value what there is, you know, I'm going to find my real self-worth, and I'm going to do the right thing. So we can go to this other extreme. Right? And then pretty soon we can't say anything to anybody. You know, we'll sit doing our beads, being holy. And afraid to say something that would be the wrong thing to say,

[24:26]

or that would be hurtful, or that would be shameful, or that would show that I have problems. I mean, I wouldn't want to let the world know that I'm needy. Or that I can get upset. So those of us in spiritual practice, we tend to have more this other kind of, you know, we can say the self-worth is net worth, that we know that's not where it's at. Then we start taking up spiritual practice, and then pretty soon we can tell, we have this idea that this is much better. But pretty soon we kind of isolated ourselves in a kind of cocoon of being a righteous person, or a holy person. And we can't let the world know really how messed up we might be if we opened our mouth, you know, or said something, or had to talk to somebody, or whatever it is. So there's some limit to that too.

[25:28]

So in the world, when we move out of ritual space, I mean, at some point we should work towards, or understand that in the long run, we can develop some space that is both a ritual space and an everyday kind of space. But if we stick to one way or the other, like this, and get caught in one way or the other, then we get pretty lost, or we get stuck. So in the everyday world, people want to know, what shall I do? And basically, you know, you have to wing it. But you better do something, and not just sit there doing your beads. Unless you're a really good holy person, that doesn't quite work. You know? I've heard of the saints who can get away with that. But not very many, not very many. And basically in the world, and so Siddhicura used to say,

[26:38]

it's like being in the dark. We don't know what to do. You have to feel your way along. And then, you know, and you don't want to try to go too fast, you might bump into something, and then you can hurt yourself. And you feel your way along. And if you're doing things with that kind of feeling your way along, with that kind of, in a sense, carefulness, you feel out what to do. But at some point, you know, it just kind of bubbles up, and it bubbles out, and it comes out, and then you may not look good. You know? And you may get criticized. And then you have to take that into account, and go on from there. This is how we learn about the world. We don't, and in the long run, this is what Buddhism calls wisdom, what to do, how to make these distinctions. What is the difference between repressing things and expressing things, and emoting, you know, acting out? Where does one stop and the next begin?

[27:44]

We don't quite know. What's what? What's just dumping on other people, and what's expressing yourself, and what's, you know, keeping too much to yourself? So to find out, we have to make mistakes. We have to do something, and see how, what comes back from the world. And then figure out, and then feel out the next thing to do. Wait for it to bubble up. Something comes up. We do it. It's very interesting. You know, I had a discussion with Karagiri Roshi many years ago about this kind of thing. I mean, I was down at Tassajara in the summertime. And at Tassajara in the summertime, as many of you know, it's very hot. It's not like it's raining here. And so if you're down at the pool, certainly there's... I'm a young man, or was, when I was, you know, at Tassajara. At Tassajara. There's many women with

[28:46]

rather skimpy amounts of clothing on, you know, bikinis, and there's many attractive women, and there's many attractive women who are students at Tassajara. And in hot weather like that, people tend to not wear very much, and so it's kind of interesting for me. And meanwhile, I have a girlfriend in San Francisco. You know, but San Francisco is San Francisco, and Tassajara is Tassajara, and here is all of this flesh appearing before my eyes. In ritual space, you know, you just... you just let it come and go, right? Stuff comes, stuff goes. Who cares? And, you know, so that's fine, right? So out in the world, what are we in now? Ritual space or the real world?

[29:48]

So I asked Kadagiri Roshi, I said, well, now how is one to practice? You know, you say, practice as the ancients practiced, right? And he said, yes, practice as the ancients practiced. So I asked him, did the ancients have a place like Tassajara? Was this their practice, with all of these women walking around with skimpy amounts of clothing on? No, they didn't have a Tassajara. What should I do then? Well, still you should keep in mind the example of the ancients. Okay. And then I said, but you know, also I have a girlfriend in San Francisco. Oh, he said, oh, in that case, well, then that's just greed. He's very definite about it. I have trouble drawing those lines. He had no trouble. Oh, in that case, it's greed.

[30:52]

So, I mean, if you start saying that that's greed, well, then pretty soon, like, is it always greed? Is there never a time that you can go and talk to a woman then? Oh, yeah, then you're going to end up being a monk and you'll just be in ritual space. Do you want to spend all of your life in ritual space? Or are you going to be in the world sometime? What are you going to do? So finally he said, look, just do whatever you want, but remember, you're the one who did it. And you should take responsibility for it. Some people might call it right. Other people might call it wrong. Some people call it good. Some people call it bad. Sometimes we might say it's hurtful. It's not hurtful. We don't know exactly what it is, but you're going to hear all about it once you've done it.

[31:59]

But there's not any alternative, you know? There's not some way to just do this thing or make a decision or do something and then nobody now or in the future ever can criticize you. You know, right? How can I do the thing that nobody can ever attack me for doing? How can I get through my life unscathed, intact, getting my way, having what I want? Do you understand? You can't do that. We can't do that way. Somehow we're going to do things that undo us. Whether it's in the world like that or whether it's in meditation, we're going to become undone and we're going to get, at times, torn apart. And in the context of meditation, we say, you know, welcome home at that time. Nyogen Senzaki,

[33:03]

this 20th century Zen teacher I've talked with you about sometimes, he said, meditation is not very complicated, not very difficult. It's just a way to your long-lost home. What did you think home was, you know? So in one sense we can think, well, home is this place where we're all protected and cozy and, you know, it's a little nest. But home is also where we don't have to worry about being perfect. We don't have to worry anymore about being right. We don't have to worry anymore about not letting the world know that I'm really not that great a person. We don't have to worry about, you know, pretense and good show, exactly. Right? This is home, where everything can hang out. Right? Well, that works pretty well in ritual space where it's got a container.

[34:04]

A little more complicated in the world, wouldn't you say? How do you let everything hang out and yet not, you know, hurt the people that you're with and not hurt yourself, harm yourself? In Robert Bly's new book, he tells us a story about his local Lutheran minister, his new book, Iron John. And the local Lutheran minister in Minnesota was a very careful kind of person and fairly stern, fairly, you know, together. Right? And he had a firm hand in his congregation in spite of various things going on. And then he was this way with his son, too. And for one reason or another, he didn't want his son to use the car, the family car. So, finally, the son stole the car. And then he called the police.

[35:09]

The father called the police. And the police caught up with him and the son pulled a gun out of the back and shot the policeman. See? So we never quite know what will happen. There's not always some... There's not going to be some way that, you know, if we're careful enough, if we're good enough, if we're right enough, where we'll make it through intact. With all of our... Who wants to do that anyway with all of the baggage we've got? You know? So, the aim in Zen, finally, is some kind of idea. I like this kind of expression I use sometimes. Take off the blinders. Unpack the saddlebags. Right? The blinders are when you're out there in the world. Net worth is self-worth. Full speed ahead. Right? You've got to go to your goal. And you can't, you know, pay attention to anything that's around you

[36:11]

or really relate to anything, except this distant goal of arriving at net worth is self-worth, which you can never get to. But you better keep going and you better keep the blinders on and you better keep, you know, at it. Right? And then maybe you'll get there. Only you don't. And then what about all that baggage you're carrying then? All the pain and the hurt and the sorrow and the imperfections and all that stuff you don't want the world to know about. It gets to be pretty heavy. You know? And the way you've been going about life isn't addressing any of that. We keep carrying all that baggage. It's such a weight then. You know? But sometimes, you know, there's the other, the flip side of that kind of weight is, hey, let's just drop all that weight and the easy way to drop all that weight is to adopt the kind of viewpoint of one way, my way, the right way. If I want your opinion, I'll tell you what it is. And then you can go full speed ahead and it doesn't matter.

[37:14]

And then you've dropped all that weight of am I doing the right thing? What do people think of me? If they don't think well of me, well, that's their problem. You know? Right? So a lot of people, a lot of us when we adopt that kind of energy or take up that kind of energy or have that kind of way of life, we have those kind of blinders on and we don't care what the rest of the world thinks because we know who we are and where we're going. And I'm, you know, and I'm doing it right. So anyway, whether we're in ritual space, in ritual space we have a kind of opportunity to take off the blinders. Pretty soon, you know, you've noticed that in meditation. Like you say to yourself, you start to meditate, right? And what? Five minutes, ten minutes,

[38:14]

a week goes by, two weeks, and then you say, you know, I'm not getting anywhere. Oh. Well, maybe you should just take off the blinders and be where you are. Right? And make yourself at home there. Find out how to be at home, where you are. Instead of thinking there's some place to get to and keeping those blinders on and trying to get ahead. And unpacking the saddlebags. Doesn't all this stuff, when you meditate, it starts to come out, right? But it'll do that, you know, your sorrow and your pain and your anger and rage Lots of things will come out in meditation. And it's so much more relaxing now that you can be like a real person. You know? To be a person, a human being. Animals, apparently Walt Whitman said something like,

[39:15]

animals don't stay awake at night worrying about their sins. But, you know, if you don't have a ritual space, this is going to happen to you in your regular life, too. Or even if you have a ritual space. Our daily life will bring us these same kind of undoings. And if we're lucky, we'll find ourselves forced to be, you know, with no alternative but to be where we are. Sometimes it's only when we get sick. Or when we have, you know, irreconcilable differences. We can't solve something, we can't work out something. In ritual space, you don't have to work out everything. You don't have to solve everything. You don't have to be a beautiful person.

[40:16]

And it's the same in the everyday world. So another Zen saying, very similar, the whinny of the pack horse completely unloaded. How refreshing. Is there some way to let go of the baggage? So we may have to, you know,

[41:26]

at times in our life, we'll emphasize one way or another. We'll get involved in the fast track and, you know, net worth is self worth. You're only as good as your last meal. And other times we'll get involved in trying to be right, blameless, the good one. And there, you know, we have various kind of, besides, you know, a more articulated ritual space like the Zendo here, we have our own rituals and our society has its rituals like alcohol, right? And drugs and things that can be your ritual and will help you not have to relate to anything and will help you not get too involved in striving ahead. Net worth is self worth. So somehow we have to find our middle way. We're each trying to find

[42:29]

our middle way in that sense. How to, how to, and even if it's not how to get through unscathed, it's how to proceed. Suzuki Roshi said just to feel your way along like you're in the dark. There's a short little poem by Antonio Machado that Robert Bly uses that says, Walker, there are no roads at sea. There's only the steps that you take. So each of us is, we each have to find our own path and create our own path. In this sense, you know, a Zen teacher once said,

[43:30]

56 years, I've walked this path by myself, no one else on the road. Spring rain. So finally, you know, Zen or Buddhism will give us little pieces of advice. What is this middle way where we don't get stuck? So Dogen Zenji in the instructions for the cook, he says, handle each ingredient with sincerity and wholeheartedness. Don't be disdainful when the ingredients are poor. Don't get overjoyed when you've got extra special ingredients. Each thing that comes along, relate to each thing that comes along. Respond to things.

[44:33]

And also we could then say something like to treasure or to acknowledge your true intention or your deep wish, which is not exactly the same as getting through unscathed, right? That's a lot of baggage. But it's something more like to become whole or to grow or to live in harmony. But living in harmony does not going to mean, you know, sticking to the ritual way, the right way to do things, to feel okay about being who you are, about your being that you have a real place in the world. And even if you don't feel that way, to leave some warm place in your heart for the possibility that you can feel that way.

[45:38]

I don't know when I'm here and sitting quietly with you in the rain. It's like a big ocean, a very deep feeling. And I wish you well in your path, finding your way, making your way, a way that isn't, you know, already there, that you make by walking, walking your own path. Something by proceeding with some care and sensitivity, we can find and know our way.

[47:09]

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