February 2nd, 1997, Serial No. 03623

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SF-03623
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Sunday Lecture

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Good morning. Good morning, everyone. And especially good morning to the young people. This is our first Sunday of the month lecture where we have children come for the first ten minutes or so of the lecture, and then they go and have their own program. So I see a lot of faces that I recognize, and some new faces, and some more people coming. I have a little bit of a cold, so maybe a lot of you have been having colds also this winter. Yes? You have one? Okay. I was wondering, for the young people, because I'm going to be talking with them primarily for the first ten minutes or so, if any of you have ever wanted to be something different than you are, have wanted to live somebody else's life, or not live

[01:10]

in your house, but live in another place. Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever wished that? Yeah? Okay, well, I have a story about two young boys who had this wish, and I actually got to have this wish come true. And the name of the story is The Prince and the Pauper. Has anyone heard that story before? Okay, well, a pauper is a poor, it comes from the word that means poor, so it's a poor boy. He was like very poor, his family was very poor. And the prince was a royal prince, his father was the king. So once upon a time, a long time ago, these two young boys who were born very close together, the same time of year, the same age, and they looked almost exactly, exactly alike. But one of the boys was born as a prince. And he lived in a big palace, and he had all sorts of fancy clothes,

[02:17]

and jewels, and wonderful dainty food to eat every day, and servants, and horses, and all sorts of things. And his name was Edward. And another boy's name was Tom. And he was born into a very poor family, and not only that, but his father and his grandmother were very mean to him, and beat him, and he had to beg for his food. And if he didn't come home with pennies, he would really get in trouble. But his mother and his sisters were very kind, but they didn't have enough to eat, and they only had one pair of clothes to wear every day, and that's all they had. And both of the boys, they were not satisfied. You can understand why the poor, beggar, pauper might not be satisfied, but the prince was not satisfied either. The prince would look out of the windows of the palace and see all these kids running around, and playing, and getting all dirty, and having a grand old

[03:18]

time. And he had all these servants, he couldn't do anything without ten servants who were dressing him, and watching him eat, and making him study three languages. So he would look out the window and wish he could be outside running around. And the pauper, Tom, the little beggar boy, wished that he could be a prince, and wear fine clothes, and travel in a carriage, and have servants, and that's what he wished for. Well, and he learned about it. In fact, a friend of his, the priest from the neighborhood church, taught him to read and write, and he was able to read about princes. So he learned about how they talked, and what they would do. Well, one day, he decided he was going to get as close to the palace as he possibly could, and see if he could glimpse the prince. And the prince, that very day, was down by the gates. And when the little beggar boy got very close

[04:19]

to the gates, the guard said, you get away from there, you, and pushed him, and knocked him down. And the prince felt so bad about that, he said, how dare you touch one of my father's subjects this way, and opened the gates, and had the little pauper come in. So there was Tom and Edward together, up in the prince's bedroom, and they had got this idea, why don't we change clothes, and just try out what it's like for me to be a prince, actually it was the prince's idea, and I'll put on new rags, and run around outside for a while, and have a grand old time, and then I'll come back. So they hatched this plan, and switched clothes, and when they looked in the mirror afterwards, it looked like they hadn't done any switch at all, because they were so identical, you couldn't tell the two apart. So the prince, dressed in rags, went outside the room, and down, and out to the gates. But he wasn't recognized as the prince, and when the guard saw him,

[05:22]

he said, you get away from here, you ruffian, and pushed him away. And the prince protested and said, I am prince Edward, and laughed, and the crowd outside the gates laughed, and they said, oh, listen to him, he's crazy, and they began to hit him, and push him, and he couldn't get back in. Meanwhile, Tom, the little baby boy, who was dressed in witches, pretty soon the servants came and asked him, you know, what his wishes were, and he was saying, I'm not really, it's not really the prince you're talking to, I'm just a baby boy, and they also thought he was mad, they thought he was losing his mind, and they got very worried, and they went to the king, and they brought him to the king, and he didn't recognize the king, and when he realized that was the king, he bowed down, and the king, who thought he was his father, said, you don't have to do that, you might, son, come over here, and everyone treated him so nicely, but they thought something was the matter with his mind, because he couldn't remember people, he didn't remember how to

[06:24]

speak Greek, and he didn't know how to eat properly, or he didn't know what the utensils were, so both of them were having a big adventure. Well, the little prince finally bumped into part of his family, his, the little baby boy's family, and his father, the baby boy's family, mistook the prince for his own son, and was angry with him, yelled at him, and was beating him, and it was terrible, and he kept protesting, how dare you lay your hand on his majesty of England, and they thought he was crazy too, so both of them were thrown into situations that were all topsy-turvy, and well, they both had lots of adventures, but one of the things that happened to the prince was that he saw, and he never would have seen this any other way, he saw how everybody in the country that he ruled, or would rule, lived,

[07:29]

who were not nobility, were not royalty, and how many people didn't have enough food, and how many people were punished unjustly, and were put in prison for no reason at all, and had terrible punishments, at that time there were many, many, very terrible punishments, so he saw that, and he made a vow when he saw these things, that when he got back to the palace, and became king, he would change these laws, and he would help these people, and he promised many of these people that he met, I will get you out of prison, and I won't let them do this to you, and they all thought he was just kind of a crazy little boy, with lots of big ideas, but he remembered later when he came back to the palace, and Tom, the baby boy in the prince's clothing, he also learned a lot of things, he was very kind to everyone, and when they brought before him matters of state, because the king died

[08:35]

while the prince was out in the world, and so Tom was treated as the king, to be, and they brought him matters of great importance, and he actually very gently and wisely made decisions according to his heart, and helped people quite a bit, so inside of the baby boy was a real prince, and inside of the prince was a common, regular kid who understood finally what it was like to be treated badly, to be hurt, and they both learned a lot from this experience. Well, you might be wondering how they ever got back into their rightful places. What happened was, the king had died, and Prince Edward, who was in wax, heard about his father dying, and was very, very sad, and really, he realized, I'm the king now, and he began telling everybody he was the king, and the coronation for the king

[09:40]

was going to happen pretty soon, and Tom Canty, the baby boy, was being shown how to do the ceremony, and was being, he'd gotten used to being treated so nicely, and he wasn't so sure he wanted to go back on the streets. Well, they were bringing him through, it was coronation day, and the whole of the town and all the countryside had turned out to watch the coronation, and they were lying on the streets, and Tom was all dressed up, and he had a big sack of coins, and he'd throw them out to the people as they passed with a big long procession, and he looked out in the crowd, and a woman was looking at him very, very strangely and carefully, and she got closer and closer to the carriage, and he realized it was his mother, and his mother had recognized him. She had always thought that this other fellow was not her son, and she got very close and tried to get closer, and he said to her, woman, I do not know you, and after that, as soon as he said

[10:47]

that, this is the saddest part of the story, as soon as he said that, he had this shame wash over him, that he had not been willing to recognize his mother was a poor beggar woman in the street, and the guard kind of backed back, pushed her away, and she was lost in the crowd, but Tom, everything had changed. All his grand ideas and all his puffed up feelings of being the next king fell away like rotting rags off of him, and he's had so much remorse and regret and sadness that he hadn't treated his mother well, that he was very downcast, and he was being brought to the streets, and his assistant, the duke was saying, the crowd is not happy, when you're not happy, look up, give them your coins, and he couldn't, he was so sad at knowing what he had done, he realized immediately what

[11:49]

he had done to his mother, so they got closer and closer to the place where the coronation was going to be, and people had been sitting there for 10 hours, all in their finest outfits, waiting for him to arrive, and meanwhile, the real king had followed some workmen into the coronation place, and had sneaked around and come in, and right at the point when they were about to put the crown on his head, he came marching down and said, stop, I am the real king, do not crown this imposter, this person is not the real king, and they all said, I don't know what it was, but Tom, who was so sad at what he had done, didn't want to be king anymore, he wanted to live his regular life, so he said, it's true, it's true, he's the real king, so there they were, looking exactly alike, and how were they to know who was the real one? Well, the final test was who could recognize the grand seal

[12:56]

of England, and the grand seal was a big, heavy, brass, round thing that you sealed documents with, and Tom Canty didn't know where it was, they had been asking him for weeks, where is the seal, the great seal, and so he asked the real king, who was in rags, to tell them, and he immediately told them where it was, and Tom said, well, why didn't you say where it was before, I've seen that, I've seen it a lot of times, and they brought, someone ran to the palace, how they would have been hidden and brought it up, and Tom said, I've seen that, but you know what I don't do with it, I've cracked nuts with it, so he had been playing with this grand seal of England, but he didn't know what it was, but the real king knew, and at that point they switched clothes, and the real Prince Edward was crowned King of England, and ever after, he took care of Tom

[13:58]

Canty, and Tom Canty's mother, and his two sisters, they became under the protection of the prince, or of the king, and the king also remembered his promises, and loved that, and freed all the people who were seen in prison who were unjustly, and did as many things as he possibly could for people, because he knew what it was like, first hand. So, that's the story for you to ponder today, what it might be like for you to switch places with someone, and if you were to switch places, what you might learn to help other beings. Okay? Now, I just wanted to say one thing before you go, today is, do you know what holiday it is today? Yes, Miles? It's Sunday, that's right, it's Sunday, February 2nd, and there's a kind of holiday today, does anybody know what the holiday is? Yes? That's

[15:05]

right, it's Groundhog Day, and you know, I was talking about groundhogs, groundhogs are these rodents, they're big, furry, brown, wizard rodents, that live in the north, the east, I don't know if we have groundhogs out here, I don't think we do, I don't know, it's too bad, but what they do on today, in the east and the north, they come out of hibernation where they've been sleeping for an hour and a half, and they look around, and if they see, if the sun's out and shining, and they see their shadow, they stay back into their hole, their hibernation place for another six weeks, and that means there's six more weeks left until spring comes, so that's what groundhog day is, and it's also another day, another holiday, can anybody imagine what another holiday it could be? Yes? Yes, that's great, it's Candlemas, and this holiday is celebrated in the Catholic Church, and

[16:12]

it comes from an even older holiday, which was the celebration of the moon goddess Brigid, and this is the time of year when the sun is getting stronger and there's more light, we begin to feel the light coming back, it's the celebration of the waxing of the light, more light is coming, and have you noticed that, that you can feel like it's not so dark as it was in the wintertime, it's starting to get light, the sun is setting right now, so this is the time when the seeds that are under the ground are just beginning to get ready to sprout, and responding to the light, all of nature is responding to the light, and Wendy and Matt are going to be doing a special thing with you today down in the greenhouse. Okay, so why don't the children all get up and fluff your cushions up. So I've never celebrated Candlemas, but maybe some of you have, but I know it has to do with

[17:36]

light and candles and the coming forth of the light, and it's a very good time of year for starting something new, it's almost like the beginning of the year, another beginning, we just had the beginning of the year, there's so many beginnings of the year, there's September feels like the beginning, January 1st, and February 2nd also, we just finished our month-long closing of Green Gulch, we had a retreat, a staff retreat, after New Year's, and then we had a three-week practice period led by Abbot Soroketsu, Dharma Fisher, and senior Dharma teacher Tan Shin Webb Anderson, who's here with us,

[18:38]

and it was a wonderful three weeks of intensive study and sitting and practicing together. And we just, we closed the practice period and then had a few days off and then we had an opening of the date ceremony, we went up to the top of the driveway where the sign is on Highway 1, and we chanted and during the chant we switched the sign from closed to welcome to Green Gulch, acknowledging all those whose main job it is at Green Gulch is to take care of guests and acknowledging how the guests and the visitors and everyone who comes through is a field of blessings, is a wonderful way to practice, and actually develops our practice fully, can't be developed fully without this meeting of others.

[19:42]

One thing that happened during the practice period is that the two main teachers, Webb and Norman, shared the teaching assignments and taught back to back each day. One would teach one morning, one would teach the next morning, and so we had a juxtaposition of two teachers with subject matter that dovetailed beautifully together, and their own teaching styles and ways of expressing the Dharma are very complementary and it was not a one flavor event. And I think this experience of seeing the many ways, the myriad ways in which the Dharma can be presented can be very helpful for students and also can be difficult sometimes.

[20:55]

One feels perhaps more affinity with one way of teaching than the other, or more comfortable with either the material being presented or the way it's being presented, and so to have both together I think allowed people to work with that, the tension between those two poles, I guess you could say. And I got to hear a lot about that from people who had questions about either one or the other, one teacher or the other, how they were able to work with that material or this way of teaching. And it reminded me of the founder of our school of Zen in Japan, Dogen Zenji Daisho,

[21:55]

who wrote a piece, a fascicle in his major work called Plum Blossoms, and if you came through the driveway, came through this way, you saw that our plum trees, actually there's two plum trees and an apple that are clustered together right at the back door of the Zen Dojo and they are in full bloom, radiant bloom right now, as are other little plum trees around Green Gulch and on the hillsides. And Plum Blossoms, Plum Tree and Plum Blossoms is an expression, another way of expressing, this piece that he wrote, expressing how the Dharma is transmitted and how the Dharma is taught. And his teacher had this poem about Plum Blossoms.

[22:58]

The first day of the year is auspicious. Myriad things are new. In prostration the great assembly reflects. Plum Blossoms open the early spring. So the first day of the year is auspicious. The first day of the year to me does not mean January 1st or any particular day. The first day of the year is right now, the first day of the year. And right now myriad things are new. At every moment myriad things are new and I think through our meditation exercises, during this practice period of mindfulness, walking meditation, people really discovered this myriad things are new as they practiced walking through Green Gulch

[24:01]

and spoke about it eloquently in class. And the next line is, in prostration the great assembly reflects. In prostration the great assembly reflects. And to me this is, the great assembly, you are the great assembly, anyone who hears the Dharma is the great assembly. And in prostration to me is the attitude of listening, the attitude of plunging into the moment and being present. The attitude of being present is prostration, whether you are fully prostrated on the floor in a full bow or not. The attitude of mind is in prostration the great assembly reflects, meaning hearing the teaching, reflecting it in yourself and reflecting it back in the world. And the last line, plum blossoms open the early spring.

[25:03]

So we may have the idea that, you know, the year goes round and spring comes and in springtime the plum blooms in spring, as if the spring and the blooming of the plum blossoms were two separate things, as if you could have one without the other. But this poem says, plum blossoms open the early spring. When you see the plum blossoms, spring has been opened for you. Your understanding of plum blossoms, our understanding of plum blossoms, is springtime and early spring, because this particular being is nibbling between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It's not quite spring by the calendar, but we feel the spring, the plum blossoms open the early spring for us. So the plum blossoms and the plum blossoms began to open,

[26:08]

little by little, one blossom, two blossoms, three, four, in January, kind of mid to late January, and then right at the end they just burst. Blossom, blossom, [...] uncountable blossoms, which is a line from another poem about the plum tree. Uncountable blossoms, and this is how the dharma is transmitted, in uncountable plum blossoms that bloom and help people with their fragrance, which, please stop by the plum tree and stand under it for a while and smell. The fragrance just wafts on the breeze and settles over green gulch. You can smell the traces of it all over. If you are present and smell deeply, you can smell it. And the same with the dharma. It permeates and the fragrance is all over.

[27:10]

And the teaching, this is a description, this is also from Darwin. Turning body and mind, ceaselessly murmuring inside the branch, clouds and moon are one, mountains and valleys are distinct. And this is a commentary, I guess you could say a poetic commentary, on the plum branch as the buddhas and ancestors teaching dharma. So the buddhas and ancestors freely turn body and mind, responding to whatever the need is that arises. Each student, each situation, there is freedom and turning to respond. No barriers or obstacles.

[28:12]

And then the third, ceaselessly murmuring inside the branch. Ceaselessly murmuring means, in Japanese it's, Go-me-yaku. Go-me-yaku means word vein, the word vein. And it's the ceaseless murmuring of the buddhas and ancestors who are teaching in all sorts of different ways and ways of expressing dharma, myriads of ways. Ceaselessly murmuring. And we have other veins that we talk about. There's the Kechi-myaku, which is the blood vein of the teaching. And we have the Kai-myaku, which is the precept vein. And these are transmitted from teacher to student. And this is the Go-myaku, the word vein. And the word vein is ceaselessly murmuring. Buddha's teaching is ceaselessly murmuring inside the branch.

[29:18]

And the branch of the plum tree is the dharma of the buddhas and ancestors. And this is ceaselessly taught. And then the second line of that is, Mood and cause are one, meaning the dharma, there is only one dharma that's being taught, the one way, the one precept, the one vein, maybe. And then it says mountains and valleys are distinct. And that points to the endless ways in which the dharma is taught by different people. So to be in this practice period where there were two such skilled teachers with two such different ways, to me it was like mountains and valleys are distinct, but the moon and the clouds are one, ceaselessly murmuring, turning body and mind, ceaselessly murmuring in the branch.

[30:19]

So the main things that were being taught in this practice period were the Four Noble Truths and the Sutra of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. And I had the opportunity to be in a retreat where there were a few points that for me would be helpful to go over about the Four Noble Truths and some examples of the Four Noble Truths or working with the Four Noble Truths that I wanted to offer today. So when I first began practicing, I think even before I came to Zen Center, in about 1968, I heard, and I think this is kind of commonly what people heard, I heard the phrase, life is suffering. And then along with that, what I heard was, the Buddha said life is suffering,

[31:37]

but he said it with a smile. And I remember being very intrigued by that. I couldn't quite imagine how that could be, that someone could say such a sad phrase and say it with a smile. So this really drew me to Buddhism because I was suffering, I guess you could say I was very, [...] very unhappy. And I didn't see, there was no turning of body and mind to respond. There was just a kind of calcification or something, a stiff, rigid approach to the world and lots of sadness and so forth. So to hear life is suffering, but the Buddha said it with a smile, really drew me to find out, well, what's this all about? But actually I wanted to, and I think Rob has said this in other lectures,

[32:41]

that the Buddha actually didn't say that life is suffering. What the first noble truth is, the truth of suffering, the truth of suffering is the first noble truth, which doesn't say that life is this way or isn't this way, it just says the truth of suffering. And the second noble truth is there is an origin to suffering and the third is that there is a ceasing of suffering or a cessation and the fourth is the path to the cessation of suffering. So yes, in life we have all sorts of difficulties and pain and sickness and being separated from those we love, being forced to be with those we don't love, and yet that is what arises in our life.

[33:44]

And the suffering that comes up with those events has to do with the first kind of suffering, which is the suffering of suffering, which is wanting that to be different, trying to get away from it, wishing it were different, being angry at people for making it that way, and all of those kinds of thoughts and fighting with the situation. So I just had, you can all think in your own lives about examples of that, where there's a difference between being sick, which I got sick during the practice period with a big cold and the flu, being sick and having a problem being sick, why would this happen to me, I'm going to miss everything, you're going to think I'm not a hard practicer, just on and on and on, what you can say about what other people are thinking about you and so forth. And this has to do with this problem, this sickness, let's say,

[34:48]

has to do with the second level truth, the origin of the conditions for suffering, which have to do with craving for things, craving, craving, craving. This conditions and allows for suffering to arise. So I did get sick, and since we were studying so hard the fourth level truth and the foundations of mindfulness, it was a marvelous opportunity, just couldn't have been better to lie there in bed and just feel what was going on and watch my mind do what it does and study it, study what was happening. And my body wanted to lie quietly. It needed lots of Kleenex and liquids and sleep, and so there was really no problem there, it was just that what was happening. And I got to read Ketchup on my New Yorkers that I was stacking up for the last year,

[35:54]

because I couldn't concentrate on too much else. And one of those New Yorkers, actually, which I couldn't find, there's this article about the interest in Japan, big interest in Anne of Green Gables. Do you know about this? Did any of you read this? Anne of Green Gables is this children's book that's, I don't know how old, 40, 50 years old maybe, about a young girl in Canada who's an orphan, and she's a marvelously intelligent child. And somehow in Japan it's been translated, and where she lived in Canada, Prince Edward Island, is the second most visited place in North America. There's like New York City and one other place, and then Prince Edward Island. And people go to have their weddings, and there's a whole tourist industry going to where Anne of Green Gables lives. I just thought I'd read what Anne of Green Gables had to say about suffering,

[36:57]

because she has a lot to say. The first kind of suffering. But she also has things to say about the second kind of suffering, which is the suffering that arises when you're in a pleasurable situation, and you realize in the middle of that it's going to end, and there's enormous suffering. And then once you have your cake and eat it, you can't have your cake and eat it too. That's the second kind of suffering. The fact that you've got that gorgeous piece of cake, and you can't keep it, it's going to disappear. So you can barely enjoy it because it's gone. That's the second kind of suffering, and Anne has things to say about that. And then the third kind of suffering is the suffering that's all perversive, what has to do with the fact that we believe that we're a separate self that permeates all of this. So Anne, how many of you have read Anne of Green Gables,

[37:58]

or if it was read to you well? I highly recommend it. So Anne is an orphan girl, and it starts out where she, there's a mistake, the people thought they were having a little boy, but it was Anne, and she's never had a home. She's always lived in the orphan asylum, and she's very, very sad. This is the suffering of suffering. She says that the person who's saying that she doesn't want her because she wanted a boy is noticing that she's not eating anything, and Anne says, I can't, I'm in the depths of despair. Can you eat when you're in the depths of despair? And this woman says, I've never been in the depths of despair, so I can't say. She's kind of a very strict, friendly woman. Did you ever try to imagine you were in the depths of despair? No, I didn't. But I don't think you can understand what it's like. It's a very uncomfortable feeling indeed.

[39:00]

When you try to eat, a lump comes right up in your throat, and you can't swallow anything, not even if it was a chocolate caramel. So that's Anne in the midst of the depths of despair and feeling those uncomfortable feelings. She also says, it's all very well, this is Anne feeling so sad, it's all very well to wonder about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it's not so nice when you really come to have them, is it? I actually feel like she's studying this despair and despondency and kind of looking at it. What is the quality of it, having a problem with despair and wanting to get out of it and then kind of turning the light back and saying, it doesn't feel so good, even though when I heard other people having it, I thought I could manage pretty well. So then the other kind of, the second kind of suffering,

[40:04]

the suffering of when you're having pleasure, it only occurs when you're having pleasure and realize the pleasure is going to end and wish it would last longer. She understands that very well too, and she understands it so well that she hesitates to seek after sensual pleasures. So she knows she's going to move Green Gables because they want a boy and Marula has told her to go outside and play and she says, I don't dare go out. If I can't stay here, there's no use in my loving Green Gables and if I go out there and get acquainted with all those trees and flowers and the orchard and the book, I'll not be able to help loving it. It's hard enough now, so I won't make it any harder. I want to go out so much, everything seems to be calling me, Ann, Ann, come out to us, Ann, Ann. We want to claim it, but it's better not. There's no use in loving things if you have to be torn from them, is there? And it's so hard to keep from loving things, isn't it?

[41:06]

That's why I was so glad when I thought I was going to live here. I thought I'd have so many things to love and nothing to hinder me, but that brief journey's over. So she gets it that if you attach to things and love them in a sentimental way, I think she understands, then you will be torn from them, then there's the pain of being separated from them. But she can't help it, she can't help loving things, so I feel like she's studying this whole, how this works. I can see why it would be very popular in Japan. It's very, her emotional life is very rich and also the descriptions of the landscape and the beauty of the countryside is quite wonderful. So the last suffering that arises, that permeates everything,

[42:08]

that is the suffering of conditioned existence and belief in self. I wanted to tell a story about myself, working with this during the practice period. Often when we talk about clinging to a self or belief in self, it's so close or it's so embedded in how we view the world that we don't even, we have difficulty in figuring out what people are talking about in terms of clinging to self. So one very good way to remember or to find self is when you've been unjustly accused. If you've been unjustly accused, right away you'll see what you believe is self and what you're trying to protect and make sure. So I had a lovely instance of that that I got to study during the practice period when we practiced Oroki, which are the set of nested eating bowls that have claws that are tied in a certain way and folded in a certain way

[43:09]

and everyone is trained to use them. If you've been practicing it for a long time, you have more facility with the claws than someone who's newer. Over the years, the teaching of Oroki has branched off. Different plum blossoms have taught it in different ways. So there's been a kind of branch that's been tying the knot. The final knot of the Oroki bowl is in a rather unusual style, which a number of people do it, so when you look around and see other people who do it that way, you think it's just fine, where they lift up the last piece of material and sort of fashion it into like a rabbit's ear, standing straight up on their bowls. The actual way that it was transmitted to us was to tie it in a very simple way and allow that piece of material to lie down nice and flat. Well, we tried to teach the line flat and simply on the side,

[44:16]

and yet there was a pervasive need for some people to construct the rabbit ear really out of choice or aesthetic appreciation or whatever. So Pinchin-san did his best to help people to show them different ways, and I was supposed to have been the one to have taught the right way to do it. So I was called in after a meal with a number of people who do rabbit ears and was told, you talk in this way, and immediately the self-awareness says, oh no, no, it was me, I didn't do it, I know how to do it right. I was taught the right way, and I want to teach the right way. Here, what do you say? Talk a little bit more about me. It was like, and hopped, you know, like it was really... And then one of these people said, oh no, no, she didn't teach you that way.

[45:20]

I was like, oh, oh, thank goodness, I've been exaggerated. They know the truth now, I didn't teach the rabbit ear way. Anyway, I was taken up and swirled and tossed in this, I don't know what to call it, just a profusion of clinging to self and wanting me to look a certain way and make sure that those people that were like, oh, oh, he was a good boy, and they were like, oh, oh,

[45:50]

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