Good morning. It appears that Norman is going to be doing most of the actual explanation, line-by-line explication of the Diamond Sutra. And in doing so, it allows me to stray a field a bit and explore some aspects that are relevant, but...

[01:09]

and germane, I hope, but not necessarily specifically addressed to just that sutra. The last time I talked here, a few days ago, it seems that there was a lot of interest in exploring, well, let me say it this way, that people seem to feel the need to express something that transcends the usual kind of dry categorizing doctrinal parts of our learning here. And I thought today, One of the questions that might allow that to be a kind of key to open some discussion a little later after I say a few things is that question, that big word called identity.

[02:14]

I said the last time that I was here, I used that phrase you've heard me use before that the name of the game, the name of the game is the game of the name. And we said that we've already, you know, pretty much come to grips with the idea that the cycle, physical events, forms, relationships we have with the world called dharmas carry with them characteristics. Fire is hot, water wets, earth is solid, I inform, air is sound, and so on. And that we attribute characteristics, project characteristics from our experience onto phenomena that's essentially empty of our ideas about them or it, and react or respond accordingly to

[03:24]

the kind of identity we have, or identities, I think it's more a question of plurality that we have established between ourselves, or oneself and one's world. So I want to talk a little bit about that, and I want to read something from the Garfield translation of Nargajuna's The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, which I had brought up. Because I think it's important for us to understand how we reify our identities, all the various sub-personalities that we have developed from the beginning. When somebody asks us who we are, we usually explain ourselves, don't we, in terms of what we do. What do you do? Well, I'm a Buddhist priest, I'm a doctor, I'm a... lawyer, I'm a this, I'm a that, I'm out of work.

[04:26]

We don't usually say that. We have a identity that arises in terms of who we are when we're with a one-on-one relationship, a wife, a lover. Different identity maybe with a good friend, a different identity that comes up at our work. Identities that we have associated with our families that we have put together And mostly we put it together out of language and the emotional, as I say, reactivity that concurrently arises with the words that we associate ourselves with. And that in seeing the dharmas and the characteristics that we attribute to people, places and things While we do have an identity and it's necessary in the conventional world, we begin to get a little bit of wisdom or get a little bit hip into seeing through our game, the name of the game.

[05:32]

At the same time, it's very important that we have an identity, that we know what our place in the creation, in the world is. And most of us, at one point or another, and particularly in places like Green Gulch, are in transition. We're in some kind of movement in our life where the identities that we have established in the past no longer work. We're looking for a new identity, a new way to come to grips with who we would like to be or who we're going to be. And in the studying of this question of emptiness, we begin to get sensitive to the fact that identities are conventional modes of expression. But, as I said before, they're not only linguistic conventions, but they're emotional conventions and they're very necessary to our sense of well-being, of belonging, someplace, somehow. And it isn't enough to say, well, I'm empty of any intrinsic self, therefore I must be happy.

[06:39]

And then I either want to kill myself or go bowling. And I quoted from Nargajuna, from the Karikas on the Four Noble Truths, which is a very important part of the Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, or the Mula Madhyamaka Karikas. That which said whatever is conventionally arisen is explained as being emptiness. That, being a conventional designation, is the middle way. And I thought, as a kind of doorway into what I'm driving at here today, two things, to see through our identities and how they come about, but also the importance of identity. This is a very wonderful book, by the way, Jay Garfield's book, explaining some of this.

[07:47]

We have it in the library. I find it very useful. You can see I've got it marked in many spots. It's difficult. So he said, whatever is dependently co-arisen, that is explained to be emptiness. That being a dependent designation is itself the middle way. This is Karika 18 of the Examination of the Four Noble Truths. And he says, Nagarjuna establishes a critical three-way relationship between emptiness, dependent origination, and verbal convention. Between emptiness, dependent origination, and verbal convention. And asserts that this relation itself is the middle way. As we shall see, this is the basis for understanding the emptiness of emptiness itself. Nargajuna is asserting that the dependently arisen is emptiness. We've already talked about that. Norm has talked about that quite a bit. I don't think there's much question that we have to go into with that aspect.

[08:48]

Emptiness and the phenomenal world are not two distinct things. They are rather two characterizations of the same thing. To say of something that it is dependently co-arisen is to say that it is empty. To say that something is empty is another way of saying that it arises dependently. Moreover, whatever is dependently co-arisen is verbally established. That is, the identity of any dependently arisen thing depends upon verbal conventions. To say of a thing that it is dependently arisen is to say that its identity as a single entity is nothing more than as being the referent of a word. The thing itself, apart from conventions of individualization, has no identity. To say of a thing that its identity is merely a verbal fact about it is to say that it is empty. To view emptiness in this way is to see it neither as an entity nor as unreal.

[09:52]

It is to see it as conventionally real. And it is as conventionally real that all of us or most of us at some time or other strive to be. Now You could say that we're born with a certain predisposition, that we're born with a certain way of taking, you know, we have a certain posture, a certain stance, a certain style of coming on in the world. And it's very clear what that is to oneself and one's family and friends after a certain amount of time. So that's given to begin with. And what's interesting, as a kind of footnote to this, is that when people put on robes and sit in the zindo and move about in the zindo versus wearing just street clothes and so on, you can see the individuality more clearly, the individual particular style or stance that a person has, or posture, you might say, not only in the formal sense, but just how one carries oneself in the world.

[11:06]

then you would have suspected otherwise. I've noticed that many, many times that when people wear robes, we're all wearing the same thing, that our individual identities, differences, are more accentuated than when we don't. And see if that doesn't hold true for yourself. We know that when we sit still, you know, and our eyes are down and a person is walking by, if we've been around very long, we know without even looking up, just kind of out of the periphery, who that person is. I remember I once sat for 24 hours. I was, talk about zealous. But I decided once that after fire watch, I would sit all night. We'd sit all day, so I sat in the guide town all night. And as you know, living in the Gaitan, there's a lot of coming and going as people go to the bathrooms and open and close their doors and go. And whoever it was that came by me during the night, without even looking up, just by the footsteps and the way the person walked, I knew the identity of that person.

[12:11]

So we're programmed this way, aren't we? We're programmed to have these identities and to place an identity and a word for each thing in the world, and that's how we function. But to the extent that we take these seriously, particularly, let's say, the name that we are given, and to reify it, to substantiate it through some hard-line view of ourselves is, of course, a recipe for misery and suffering, as we know. There's a koan. It's K68 of the Blue Cliff Record. You probably have heard this one. Yangshan's, what's your name? Yangshan's, what's your name? Yangshan asked Sun Xing, what is your name? Xing said, Huiqi.

[13:14]

Now, Huiqi is another way of saying Yangshan. Actually, in Chinese, I guess this is a pun on the mountains from which the two names were taken. What's your name? What's your name? Yangshan, or Huiqi. Yangshan said, Huiqi, that's me. Xing said, my name is Yangshan, or Huijian. Yangshan roared with laughter. It's like saying maybe Mr. Black and Mr. White, two mountains. What's your name? Black meets white. Well, I'm black. No, that's my name. Okay, I'll be white. And so the whole point in the poetry and in the commentary, it's talking about how these two saw that, you know, we talk about the two truths, right? There's the universal or the what we call the ultimate truth, which is the truth of emptiness, the ungraspability of phenomena.

[14:20]

And at the same time, there is the conventional truth. And that these two, as is always the case in koans, are playing with the relative and the absolute. So when, as always in koans, when one posits the absolute, the other comes right back with the relative. So Yangshan says, you know, my name is White. Well, what's your name? Or a Let's say I'm white and you're black and you say, well, I'm white. Well, no, I'm white. Okay, then I'll be black. And so we just, we see the relativity of names and we kind of empty out the importance that we attach to that. And at the same time, if we take somebody's name away, if somebody deprives you of your name, of your identity, Because you know, if you've been in an identity crisis, and sooner or later we all are, and not once, but more than once, then we know the importance of what happens when our name is usurped in some way.

[15:24]

Correspondingly, when I was given the name of Dagon, I actually decided when Mel gave me that name, I kind of like the sound of it, because it was easy to remember, but I thought, what would it be like actually to take on another name at this time in my life? Do I become a different person with that name? Well, the question is yes and no. That actually when I began to be addressed as Diagon rather than David or Dave or Lunkhead or something else that my family had called me, or my friends, I had a good friend who used to call me Dingleberry, that was his name. That I would respond accordingly. Diagon carries, you know, the great vow carries a certain weight and a certain responsibility with that weight and so on. And I would find out that when I'm Diagon, like I'm being Diagon's giving the talk, you know, not Dingleberry. That as Diagon... I react a little bit differently than I do in other cases and other under-assumed names. And as an actor in life, and we're all actors, aren't we?

[16:28]

We all act out these different roles that we assume and are given. And I say assume and are given because, as you see, it does dependently arise, doesn't it? You see me a certain way, I begin to respond a certain way. And as Norman said yesterday, when we treat people as Buddha, then people begin to actually respond as Buddha. So this question of having a name just can't be sloughed off as something that's superfluous like a shirt, that we can just take off a shirt and get a new shirt. We cover our nakedness, our psychic nakedness with names as well as we cover our physical nakedness with clothing. I can tell you some stories here about this. I was thinking about a time about 14 years ago, more or less, when I went through a period of being, you could say, denuded

[17:37]

of all identities I had. I no longer had a job. I no longer had a personal relationship. I was not at Zen Center at that moment because I had chosen to leave. And I found myself living in this hut near the water and relying on the good offices and benevolence and beneficence of friends and other people to support me. the incredible anguish that arose by not having an identity. Nobody came to see me, particularly because people had their lives. And I discovered something. Amidst my suffering, I discovered that Well, a couple of things. One is the obvious thing that whether or not I was responding to some sense of myself as an identity, as a place, that I had found that I had lost my place in the world.

[18:41]

And losing your place in the world was like losing yourself. But I realized that this darkness, that going into this kind of dark place would be very rich. But if I had had a choice to avoid it, I would have done so. But I had willy-nilly, in some sense, set my life up to find this place, actually. So I noticed, however, that when I walked outside, the sun shone on me, I've said this before, that the dog knew me, didn't care who I was, that he would follow me around wagging his tail, became a good friend. And if I was painting, doing some work around the place, caretaking for the folks that were taking care of me, which I did, I would say, well, today I'm a house painter. And I'd start painting the house. And then I'd go in and sit for a while and write a letter. Well, now I'm a letter writer. And I noticed the importance with which to give myself some, you might say, rotating designation, conventional designation of who this, what this side of experience was about.

[19:47]

And I saw the importance of having a name, of searching for a place in the world. I also realized that I had led a long life filled with people, places, things, and experiences. And in my training as a Zen student before I had left, I had already, of course, come upon the emptiness teachings and about the fact of what I'm speaking of here, that things are empty of any self-nature per se. But that didn't, knowing that, it did absolutely nothing to relieve the pain I was suffering. And I felt all of these voices in me, all of this desire to express myself, to find my place in the world. And I began to realize that the importance of poetry, the importance of finding your place, your voice. And so I wrote a poem.

[20:51]

And some of you have heard it, but I'm going to, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to read a couple of poems today, but I'm going to start with this one because I think it's relevant. And by doing this poem, by writing the poem, suddenly I was a poet. Suddenly life came forward. It was like you hit bottom, you know, it's like you go deeper and deeper and deeper into the darkness. I mean, just sink with it. You know, maybe just breathe from 1 to 10 and start again, like that woman, friend of mine did. Whatever, you know, gets you through the night, the long night. You will hit bottom, in a sense, or you hit a place and you go boom, things will go boom, and you start coming up again. And as you come up, language comes in. Words come in. Thoughts come in, which is language. So I was thinking of all this stuff up in the attic here, or down in here, which is, and I said, the poem goes, Who is left in the attic among the discarded albums calling out my name to tell its story?

[22:00]

Leave everything, it says. Leave the dishes in the sink. I was doing all the dishes for them. answering their phones and so on. Leave the dishes in the sink. Let the phone ring. Lock the door and tell my story. Even you, I'm calling you from the addictive silence of stars. You who have talked to trees, listened to stone on a hot afternoon, who gave away your voice to the stream that you might know its cool message. for the clock keeps running, and my words are wrapped in yellow paper. Turn your eyes toward me one last time. Turn your eyes toward what is hidden in the bones beneath your shirt, where songs come from, from the river of your heart flowing through days happy and sad, and we will rejoice together. I'm here, I'm here with you. As you stand, head pointed skyward, arms and fingers spread. I would do that sometimes like this. feet planted apart on the ground in emptiness, in emptiness that breathes in thunderheads this summer day, in the garden blooms that twirl before the wind in hungry tongues that long for one more song for time that thirsts endlessly for itself, in blood that carries on a whispering campaign through the roots deep in the soil of your being now, now.

[23:26]

take a sheet of white paper and write these words on it. Quote, do not be afraid. This is what I am. So at that moment, at that moment, I realize you have to proclaim who you are. It's not enough to say, I can see through language, I can see through words, I can see through the different roles I play. And like Yangshan and like these other adepts simply move from one to the other so easily just by understanding that process. No, no, no. It doesn't work quite like that. The reason I'm also bringing this up because the other day as we talked I thought there was a hunger in the room. that out of these teachings that we have, there's a hunger for us to get in touch with the, if I could call it the poetic, the poetic life. And by poetic, I don't mean the exaggerated life, the candy-coated life.

[24:29]

I mean the deep, the deepest aspect of ourself, the part that moves us most profoundly in the world. To find that place, that identity, is what I think this practice is about, that the sitting practice is about. Because even as we sit and hear these various voices calling to us, and watching them come and go. Even if we go through different jhanas and states where that whole narrative ceremony drops away and we're free of that constriction, that limitation, we can face the moment-to-moment death of our identities and so on without any contraction or pain, even so, even then, as soon as we get up. turn away from the wall and move outside into the sunlight and the world of other people and so on, the drama starts up again. The question of who am I and what am I with all of you.

[25:30]

And the what am I with all of you, as we've already established very clearly, is I am what I am with all of you because all of you are exactly who you are and so on, clear across the cosmos, evidently. that as soon as we make a larger telescope, space expands that much more and so forth. As deeper as I go into myself, that much more does inner space open in, open out or inward. And I look for a place in which to place myself, open my hands and say, I'm here. As we get older, as we know, as we get older, and we look in the mirror. We've played those games even when we're young. Remember the first time you looked in the mirror and you really stared at yourself in the mirror and you'd watch your face change? I'm not talking about when you were on acid or something. We all did that, too. I'm talking, I mean, that was easy to see it then.

[26:31]

Or the faces of your friends turning, you know, going through, from babes to old crones. But just watch your own face going through all these changes. And you know, it's kind of a little bit spooky, besides being entertaining to see that, you know, you can't grasp this intangible self. But there's a woman, a wonderful poet, she's a Australian woman who's got to be a certain age in her life and had played the whole game of identity in the world as being a woman. Now, I'm sure the women in this room appreciate the fact that as a woman there's all these other things in a, quote, so-called male-dominated society of the past, at least, that you were required to play. And she's reached a place in her life where she's finally gone through a lot of that. I don't know much about her. Her name was Fleur Adcock. Fleur Adcock. She's an Australian poetess.

[27:33]

And she goes to a place where she's alone to find herself a bit. and a solitary place, apparently. So she wrote a poem about weathering, and she's looking in the mirror and seeing herself, and sees the face in the mirror, and suddenly she understands this new kind of weathering that is happening. She's a woman maybe approaching late 50s. She writes, My face catches the wind from the snow line and flushes with a flush that will never wholly settle. Well, that was a metropolitan vanity wanting to look young forever, to pass. I was never a pre-Raphaelite beauty and only pretty enough to be seen with men who wanted to be seen with passable women. But now that I'm in love with a place that doesn't care how I look... Or, if I am happy, happy is how I look, and that's all.

[28:36]

I love that line. But now that I'm in love with a place, and you could say the whole world, imagine feeling this way about the whole cosmos. Now that I'm in love with a place that doesn't care how I look, or if I am happy, happy is how I look, and that's all. My hair will grow gray in any case. My nails chip and flake. My waist thickened. and the years work all their usual changes. If my face is to be weather-beaten as well, it's little enough lost for a year among lakes and fells, where simply to look out of my window at the high pass makes me indifferent to mirrors and to what my soul may wear over its new complexion. Isn't that great? If my face is to be weather-beaten as well, it's little enough lost for a year among lakes. It's little enough lost for a year of sitting on a cushion. For simply to look out of my window at the high pass makes me indifferent to mirrors and to what other people say, to the mirrors of the world, and to what my soul may wear over its new complexion.

[29:51]

Fleur Adcock. A-D-C-O-C-K. Now, I actually heard this off of a record, and it may have been Babcock, but it sounded like Adcock. And I remember that the identity that would start up came out of tears. I remember saying to myself, real tears burn my cheeks, and out of them shall I bloom again. We have to go through this question of identity crises and see through that game. But we can't just see through it intellectually. That's the whole point of this talk. We have to actually go through it emotionally. And we have to do it in the world itself, wherever that world may be, to find the, you know, we say that to find the real me, please stand up and raise your hand. Your hand. And the real you will stand up sometime and raise your hand, but that real you, of course, will be real for a while, and then another real you, another part of your many sub-personalities, the many-faceted self, will come forward.

[31:01]

Because we are infinite in our ability to change. But most of us sell out. I don't think anybody in this room is here because they've sold out to the world. I think we're here because we refuse to sell out to the world in terms of how we can be pigeonholed. And I think that's one of the reasons that people come here to study the Dharma with us, is that they feel that the identities that we glean from the mass media and from one another in our upbringing aren't adequate. In fact, are a definite source of anguish. It's a little bit problematical. If we're a trained musician or something like that and have a profession that is also very fulfilling, that's one thing. One question, if we're... on the spiritual path and take vows and so on, the whole question that evolves around that is to, of course, renounce, to shed the various selves, to see through the games of the name that we place on ourselves, and not to get caught in status questions.

[32:16]

But of course, as any of us know who have studied here very long, we all get caught up in our, it's no longer worldly status, it's the status of how we wear our robes, how we bow, how we do our orioki, how we, the comparative mind is still at work. And the identities that we take on thereby in reflection of other people can still be a big problem and at the same time really choice choice meat, raw meat for practice. We come here and fall in love. A lot of people do that. And by having relationships and being sensitive to one another and becoming involved in one-on-one relationships is another way of finding our identities or who we are. But too often we fall into the old pattern. We come here trying to break away from old patterns only to find out that we're drawn right back into the same old games. Have you noticed?

[33:18]

Anybody? I guess not. Well, I... And, you know, you get very prideful, you know, because we are, we do have this ability to split reality into two parts. You know, that's a marvelous accomplishment. I think Reb talked about this once, about how prideful human beings are because we have this ability to split up the world and to reify it. And so we're a little bit proud of that, you know. But we carry that to the extreme of projecting our particular views and so on onto others and then reacting accordingly to whether we like it or not, what comes back at us. And that causes, of course, the suffering. And that reminds me of a story. So we'll have a little discussion, but I have to tell you this story first.

[34:22]

about how you assume you know who somebody is. As I said earlier, we look at somebody and right away we have all these projections. We've already pigeonholed one another into separate identities. This is a person that has all these characteristics, all of these marks. And that person has all those marks or characteristics, all those dharmas. And that's who that person is. And I can tell myself that's not true, but still I notice I'm responding accordingly. So I had this job once. I've told you this story too, but it was a wonderful job. It was a remarkable opportunity. I was keeping body and soul together different ways while I was trying to learn how to paint and also I was doing some astrology as a teacher and so on. But anyway, I was a kind of fringe person and so I was taking on different jobs about 25, 22 years ago, 20 years ago maybe. Somebody offered me a job of selling papers on the street for two hours every morning, five mornings a week for $300 a month. And my immediate response to this friend, it happened to be somebody I had coffee with every morning, he was a newspaper distributor here, was, selling papers on the street?

[35:34]

I'm a college graduate. I mean, you don't sell papers on the street. You know, I'm somebody. Well, then I thought, you see, listen to that other voice that comes in and says, do it. Do it, do it, do it, do it. Don't say, don't get caught, do it. So I said, well, okay, yeah. And I guess it was because the Chronicle was putting on this campaign when USA Today came out first, so they were almost giving these papers away. Anyway, he'd give me 100 papers every morning. I'd go down to 4th and Heatherton and San Rafael, which was the transfer point for all over Marin for people going into the city at rush hour from 6.30 to 8.00. So I got to know everybody on the street, you know, because I'd be the one person standing there in this sea of bodies moving off and these mechanical dragons roaring these people away to the city. And I got to know a lot of the street people. And one of the street people, all the street people, would sooner or later know that Dave was an easy touch. So they would say, you know...

[36:35]

You want to have some change, spare change? I'm going to get my check tomorrow. That was the line. I'm going to get my check tomorrow. I'll pay you back. And one of them, I called him, actually I called him to myself Limpy. It wasn't a very nice name. I forget what his real name was, but he limped. And you had to kind of stand back from him because he gave off a very unpleasant odor. and vibe but he always liked to stop and talk to me and he would always end up by hitting me up for some money for coffee and at first of course being the compassionate buddha bodhisattva that i had already decided that i was going to be and that this was my street ministry i didn't tell anybody this but this is what because people would come up and just confess everything to you one person just one person got off the bus once came straight up to me and said she left me She took the car and left me the cat. And I'd say, oh, I'm sorry, you know.

[37:36]

And I'd listen to it because I was a stranger. But anyway, so it was like a street ministry. And it was a wonderful lesson in humanity. It was like a humanities course 101, and you got 300 bucks a month for it. But anyway, I began to stereotype these people now. They were no longer fresh, and I was beginning to resent this guy. And then... Pretty soon I'd see him coming, I'd kind of look away, you know, and he'd come up and he'd start talking to me and sure enough he'd hit me up for some money and I just couldn't say, hey, pay up or shut up. So I'd give him a little, but he could see, he could detect, I'm sure, in my attitude toward him that something had changed here, I wasn't the nice guy I pretended to be. So one day I saw him coming up and I really tried to ignore him, you know, limpy. He always wore black and he limped, you know. And he said, hey, And he said, hey, come here. And I finally turned and he said, watch, put out your hand. Because he owed me something like $13. It wasn't a lot of money, but it was $13 and something.

[38:37]

So I put out my hand and he said, watch, one, two, three. And he went up to $13. And how about a buck for interest? Don't think you know it all. Like that. So at that moment, at that moment I woke up and I thought, and the phrase came to my mind and I've used it many times since, who knows how the bodhisattva comes. Who knows how the Bodhisattva is in our life? The Bodhisattva is an activity that wakes us up to everybody. We all perform that activity with one another in some way. And it broke through these identities. And just the way he said it, he was much smarter than I gave him credit. He knew the whole trip that was going on with me. And he was going to teach me a lesson. And he did. I don't think you know it, old smart guy. You're a Bodhisattva, but you can be an asshole. Yeah. Here's a poem by, that's I think vis-a-vis works by David White called The Sun.

[39:46]

And the wonderful thing about his poetry is that he talks about these transition points, about dropping away our old identities, breaking through the crust and the shell that we have developed around ourselves. And he also sits. In fact, he'll be coming here for the Millennium Series. He's a wonderful poet. I really, really recommend that you go hear him. He's just marvelous. This is called The Sun. He's writing about an Irish poet named Cavanaugh. I don't know if you've heard of Cavanaugh. Cavanaugh was a great, great, great Irish poet and ended up his life, it was kind of a drunk and very sad story in many ways. But he had fought against the usual Irish kind of nationalistic posture that the poets had taken. And so he was very unpopular in his own country for a long time. But after his death, he became well-known in his later poems. He writes all these later love poems trying to reclaim his lost innocence. And 50 years before, he'd been in love with a young woman named Hilda.

[40:50]

They're called the Hilda poems. I think Ingen recites poetry. Oh, yeah, he did. Ingen down in Tassajara had a book of Kavanaugh, and I was... It's hard to get. I've tried to get Kavanaugh's poetry. It's hard to get, but he has one volume of it, and more are coming, I understand, of his later poems, of which David White writes. And I'm not going to read all the poem, but some of those things that I think are germane to what I'm talking about. It's called The Sun, The Sun. This morning on the desk facing up a poem of Cavanaugh celebrating a lost love. She was the sun, he said, and now she still lives in the fiber of his arms, her warmth through all the years, folding the old man's hand in hers on a Sunday Dublin morning. Now this is the phrase. Sometimes reading Kavanaugh, sometimes reading Kavanaugh, I look out at everything growing so wild and faithfully beneath the sky and wonder, and wonder why we are the one terrible part of creation privileged to refuse our own flowering.

[41:55]

Sometimes reading Kavanaugh, I look out at everything growing so wild and faithfully beneath the sky and wonder why we are the one terrible part of creation privileged to refuse our own flowering. I know in the text of the heart the flower is our death and the first opening of a new life we have yet to imagine, but Cavanaugh's line reminds me how I want to know the sun and how I want to flower and how I want to claim my happiness and how I want to walk through life amazed and inarticulate with thanks and how I want to know that warmth through love itself and through the sun itself. There's more in the poem, but that's So the volume is called The House of Belonging. We may have it here in the bookstore. Yeah, I do. Gee, Martha. Martha's my shill. She's on there. For some reason, I put it in, but I wasn't going to read it.

[43:00]

But this, I was thinking of... After I mentioned that, who knows how the bodhisattva comes, I did write a poem and that is the first line. Who knows how the bodhisattva comes, the one who saves all beings before herself. He may drive a bus, she may serve you in a greasy spoon, it could be you or me, but not when we are trying consciously. The drunkard on his knees as he wipes the dirty face of his lover with a handkerchief wet by his mouth with such tenderness as stuns the watcher of the scene. The boy on thin ice pulling from the freezing water a schoolmate who's fallen through, but also my friend, also. As you sit there looking at your hands, anger and grief, fear or lust, not to mention despair, given room, given room, allow the space to breathe, to be what each one is before, like a snowflake, it melts before the gaze of your accepting heart.

[44:04]

This Wipes the Dirty Face of a Lover was also actually two people, two street people, spastic young woman named Sharon, who used to come. I call her spastic. Actually, she wasn't spastic. She had multiple sclerosis. She was a street person. And she was amazing because I didn't even know it was female persuasion at first because of the dirty clothes. But absolutely furious. determination to be who she was in the face of her own personal catastrophe. And she would go up to people in the line and put out her hand. And here are all the people buttoned up tight, right? Their briefcases and everything on the bus. And here she comes up to them kind of going like that. And people would turn away or give her something. And each morning she'd come over to me, you know. And once she said to me, you know, as soon as she would get her SSI, she'd go out and drink it.

[45:08]

And, well, anyways, and then she had this other, this street person, another alcoholic, a young guy named Mike, who was younger than her, they got together somehow. And then one day you'd see them together, and the next day she turned up with a black, one day she would turn up with a black eye, and you wouldn't see him, and she would curse out Mike. And then you'd see Mike watching her from behind cars, and And then the next day, Mike, one day Mike would turn up with a black eye. And she'd be watching him. And then there was this day where I hadn't seen either of them for a while. And she stumbles down the street and sits down and total kind of just collapses on this bench. And Mike comes along and he gets down in front of her. I never will forget it. I almost chose Smith to think of it. He takes out his handkerchief. She said, no. I said, well, they're going to find you dead, Sharon, in the street one of these mornings, and then they're going to take what's left of your body to a place, clean it up a little bit, and then lay it under a sheet on a big stainless steel table under very bright lights and an amplifier filled with young interns and faces looking down, pull the sheet off of you, and the pathologist or doctor of,

[46:24]

anatomy will stand with a nice sharp scapula above and lay you open from your sternum down to your pelvis and reach in and cut out your big diseased liver and hold it up and say, this is what alcohol does. And she looked at me, she said, Thanks, Dave, you always make my day. Anyway, I think the whole point of everything, I think you got the point, but... Whatever ideas we have about people, each of us here and anywhere else in our life, about our identities and how we project the different characteristics, we play a slippery game, you know. And if all the world's a stage, as they say, then we should all be joyful players and play like the two monks who played with each other's names, back and forth, bandied them back and forth, stole each other's territory, stole the flag and drum from one another, and it was okay to do that.

[47:41]

Because they understand that this dependently arises with all the feelings, and that very drama of our life is our very place to be, without attachment, if possible. So now it's five minutes to ten. I've managed to, as I was hoping I could do, take up the first hour and then leave some room for discussion about identity, if you wish, how it relates, you know, as I see it relating to all of our practice very, very, very, very exactly and precisely. But how you feel about these questions are something that we're studying here and how it vitalizes us rather than devitalizes us and makes us kind of cold and uptight and dreary people rather than happy, alive, warm-hearted people. Well, thank you so much.

[48:44]

I find it extremely helpful to hear that while we try to see through the emptiness of our identities, that it's OK to still need an identity. I think that really needs to be reminded of that in this practice, I think. I had a question about something you seemed to be about to say earlier, but maybe you could follow through on it a little bit more. there can be some difficulty if a person has those satisfying work in the world or something and is also practicing. Would you say more about that? Well, it's just that, you know, if we work very, very hard to become successful in some field. I was thinking of a musician, for example. professional musician who's practiced, or a doctor, let's just take the musician, and builds up an identity around that, when that, if you, you know, let's say it's a pianist, suddenly her hands are broken, she can't do that anymore.

[49:46]

The whole edifice comes down like a house of cards. If you haven't seen that the conditions with which you have built up this identity are dependently co-arisen and can dependently co-arise in a way that will take it all away from you. That's what I meant. I see. So that... I have a different question. Yeah. I thought what you meant was that this pianist might be... Nothing has happened to her hands yet, and she's being a successful pianist, and she's also practicing Dharma and... trying to remember that even though she's wildly successful and everybody comes to her concerts, that it's empty. And, I mean, is there... Well, she could see that, maybe. But if she doesn't, sooner or later the doctor or somebody's going to knock on her door and say it's all over toots, then what are you going to do? Then what is she going to do? That was my question. What are we going to do, no matter how successful our life is, quote, because we've really managed somehow with luck, with good karma, we call it what you will, to be happy in our life because we're getting everything we need to feel fulfilled, vital in the midst of the world.

[50:57]

Being in the world in such a way that the world comes forward and vitalizes us and we feel that we're giving back to the world. And that's kind of an expression of happiness, I think. And we put off the idea that, you know, I'm going to find out that I have only so long to live, or sooner or later I'm going to have to die. We say what's used to being morbid about it. But what do we do, actually, when our friends begin to die? And we can't control things, you know. And pain creeps in. Because in the world of flux, you know, what you get, you lose. So what do we do about our loss? Do we bloom out of our tears again? Are we willing to do that, or are we going to sell out? You know, what David White talks a lot about is how, you know, when you get the older you get, the idea is to take a really low posture in the world. You know, get your insurance together and your retirement funds and so on, and hope that you don't stick out so you get slapped down in some way, rather than when you're young, you're willing to climb the mountain, willing to step out, take a chance.

[52:08]

And that life is constantly saying, step out, take a chance, drop the thing that's maybe your gift, but also your limitation. Because our gifts are our limitations at the same time, keeping us away from some other. So to jump into that darkness, I think of it as falling backwards in the darkness and knowing that you'll be caught. you'll be cradled by the world, is taking that kind of chance rather than play it safe. But the tendency is, as we get older, I can see it in myself, is I want to play it safe. I don't want to rock the boat. But life says you've got to rock the boat. Yeah, somebody else was before you. I think it was Martha. Martha? I was just thinking in response to Sue's question, too, is there's always, I think, an awareness, even though you may be a great pianist and have a beautiful house and friends and all that, who really is the great pianist?

[53:11]

How did you get to be the great pianist? Did you really do it? Yeah, exactly. Is this house really all your creation? I think that's where the kind of So you don't possess it. Freedom there. Yeah, you meet people like that who've got everything, it seems, and they also seem to be free of attachment to it. At 23 years old, most people in this room would call me young. But I feel that there was a time when I started denying life's call to come forward. put it all out there long, long ago.

[54:25]

Probably when I was around 10. It's just this feeling that's coming up for me that how much I'm holding back is immense. And there's a force behind a dam. I'm just aware of this tendency, this idea that comes up that I want to live for a while. And therefore, you know, want to protect my life and be safe and protect my ego and not get psychologically destroyed. And yeah, so it's just, I don't know, it's just amazing to me right now that that dam and that pressure will help that.

[55:37]

I feel like I want to let today be my last day and just let it all be out there. I wonder if you could comment on, just to encourage me, what seated meditation has to do with that kind of thing. Seated meditation has to do with, well, I mean, you're talking about, you know, controlling our life, and I'm talking about something that comes from without that will open the floodgates in your life that you won't be in control of what opens the floodgates of your life. I mean, you'd like to be, I'd like to be, but life comes forward, and I think Blanche Hartman was the one who used the phrase, somebody told her, life jumps.

[56:39]

Suddenly, you know, you find yourself in quite a different identity as the person who told her that story, who was in Mexico and got picked up on a drug charge and found himself overnight from being a tourist there to being in a Mexican prison, and the guard said to him, hey, good and gold, life jumps, doesn't it? So all at once, life jumps. And when you find that, and everything's ripped off, so to speak, all the feeling of supporting you ripped off, you're not going to like it. You're going to want to run from it. That's the usual tendency, rather than embrace it. So then the seated practice, as Fu said once, this practice helps us be able to stand when that force comes. Because I find what you just said to be absolutely true. I mean, I can't find that day or that energy or that change that is going to open up my life like that. I've been searching for it for these 13, you know, 23 years entirely.

[57:44]

Well, don't worry. Just live. Keep living and it'll happen to you. You don't have to worry about that. I mean, really. I'm joking. I'm joking. Don't take my word for it. You don't have to take my word for it. But what does seated meditation do for that? Well, if we're sitting for seated meditation to build another wall of security around ourselves, then when that wall is knocked down, the seated meditation will seem like a big shucking jive act that we did. and which also happens to a lot of us at some point. You know, Okamura Sensei, did I talk about this? Okamura Sensei mentions that he practiced, you know, he was a monk for years and years at Antaji and so on with Uchiyama Roshi as his teacher. And then went to Komazawa University and graduated with their Buddhist studies.

[58:49]

He was a trained monk. Went to Massachusetts with those other two or three monks and they built up from scratch this whole temple of theirs and had no money. And he worked and worked his body to the place where he couldn't sit And his whole health deteriorated. And he had to go back to Japan. He had no job. He had no status. He had no identity. He had to go and live in his brother's apartment, he said, in Osaka for two years. He couldn't even do takahatsu on the street, he said, because he was too weak to do that. So he had nothing and he said all at once, spontaneously, one day he just sat down and started to sit by himself. He said, for the first time I understood zazen. It wasn't any longer relevant to what I wanted. It was just something that now arose spontaneously. And it didn't solve any of my problems, but now I was sitting for the sake of just sitting. Just was sitting to sit. And he said, I suddenly understood Dogen Zenji and all my teachers for the first time. Until then, he said, oh, he said, I read this passage

[59:51]

I'd read this passage, I forget what the sutra was, about the arrogance of youth and health. And he said, I had had youth and health. And of course that had carried me through. But when my youth and health was suddenly ripped off, who was I in my city? And he was very depressed, you know, very, he felt that he couldn't do this practice anymore. He could, he said, I couldn't do this practice. Suddenly I realized that I no longer am doing this practice. So you've heard before, the practice begins to do you. So by sitting, I think what Phu was saying too, by sitting with this practice, you see, for a while, when that time comes in your life, the floodgates open and sweep you away. You might just finally sit down and count from one to ten and say, that's how I'm going to get through this. Then for the first time you'll be sitting, maybe for the sake of sitting. And so will I and so on. So don't worry so much about it. It'll happen for you. Life will arrange it. Yeah, for years when I would sit, I had this image that would come of being on the edge of a cliff, you know, like a bird with its wings down.

[61:00]

And I wanted to jump, but those wings were not going to go up. It was just like, nope, I'm going to sit right here, like the edge of the tongue. And I told my therapist, who's a hypnotherapist, once, I told him this image, and he said, hmm, he said, maybe it's a curve. Well, that image isn't of leaping from the 100-foot pole. I remember the Castaneda story about Daman, about leaping in this open space and so on. It seems to be part of the teaching. Well, just leaping when... Yes? I'd like to hear that part in your poem again about listening to the creak. listening to the crew. I'll reset it to you after. Sandy?

[62:08]

What's the title again of the Jay Barfield book? The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. I think we have it also in the bookstore, maybe? Yeah? It's a wonderful book. The characters are extremely difficult to understand it all by yourself. And there's another book called The Emptiness of Emptiness by Strang. Huh? That's another good book, The Emptiness of Emptiness. But I find this Garfield book to be a wonderful text for really explaining the emptiness of, the importance that language in a conventional world, how explanations, descriptions, how we reify that, build up a life around that, and then how at the same time we have to see that we live in that as the middle way and not get stuck in it. That's a tremendous practice to suddenly realize even the very things that we're describing in here, just yesterday as the abbot is describing all of this, we have to realize that we're just listening to more description, more storytelling.

[63:17]

And not just, I mean, that just, we can't stop with just, you know, we would like to stop with the just or the mere concept, but we now take that and build a little home around us, a little nest around us with the emptiness teachings. So the emptiness teachings has to also be emptied out. And then the world of form, you know, emptied out and emptiness again is recovered in the world of form, as we understand. And that happens in our life. This process you're talking about gets emptied out and then it reforms itself. This is a process actually that we can learn to trust in if we can just get through the dark nights without doing ourselves or other people in, you know. in some way, or getting trapped in escape mechanisms, you know, alcohol or whatever. Yes, Andrea's hand is lit up. With this discussion of identity, I'm reminded of something that Wendy said to me in the practice period I did last year.

[64:25]

And it was something that said about being very tough on artists who wanted to do their work during a practice period, that he really thought it was not a good idea. And Wendy didn't say why. But I've been thinking about that a lot, you know, being a painter. And I've always, by the way, as an aside, I've always felt uncomfortable when someone will ask me what it is that I do, and for me to say, yes, I'm an artist. I've always thought that was a rather pretentious kind of response, and also limited to who I feel I really am, that it's an integrated part of a whole bunch of things going back to Big Ben. But I was wondering if you, what you think about that, about setting that work aside in terms of identity and practice.

[65:31]

Yeah, for the first 10 years, if you're going to do practice for 10 years, don't do it. That's because that's what I did. Yeah. I'm just saying, I'm not trying to be facetious. I just mean that when I came here, I brought some things along, you know, some old paints and canvases a little bit that I was finishing up. Kept them in my room in the guide town and so on, then finished them and gave them away. But I was also giving up with those last paintings my identity as, quote, a painter, even though I had not ever, ever thought of myself except as a kind of Sunday painter, as a hobbyist painter. But I didn't dare to, actually. But at some point, I realized that the reason I had come here It wasn't because I was satisfied with what I was doing in the world at large, in my world at large.

[66:36]

I came here because those things were not, I guess fulfilling is a tricky word, but were not adequate. And that I had, it was by abandoning, at least for a while, by putting aside something for a while. And just allowing, just following a schedule. And learning to be selfless in a way that was hard, is hard. Not trying to fulfill my own needs, my direction for a while. Give all that trip up for a while. And I brought that same question up to Reb a long time ago. He said, just give it up for now and later it'll be there. And you can do it again. But for now, he said, just drop it all. And that's what you're learning here. And I thought that was really good. And I did. For years, I gave it up. And then, look, started all up again. Because my wife wanted one picture. Yes. I have a question about this because what you've been talking about is identity as an artist as opposed to, I mean, my identity of being a filmmaker isn't the same as it was because I'm not, that's not solely what I'm doing, but the energy, the creativity that I'm used to, it's sort of just a flow for me of how my being moves in the world and how responses happen and it's habits

[67:59]

And it's joyful, and sometimes it's helpful. So I've been looking at whether or not to lock off that activity or let it slowly fall away. And I'm sort of sitting in the middle of that. I don't know exactly when something comes up, I respond, and I get great joy from it. And I think having a chance to play in that way play creatively lightens my heart and possibly helps me in other ways and helps other people. So this idea of shutting off the light seems erroneous. I mean, I've thought about it, and I've tried it, and it doesn't work. Because the light comes back on in response to situations, and it's just sort of away. Well, you know, what pops into my mind is that we're all in this big pot.

[69:03]

Living in a sangha, living in an intentional, particularly intentional religious community is like being stirred in this big pot. There's that poem by Rumi, right? Is it Rumi? that Ed used to talk about, and that we're in this pot to give flavor to everything else. Some of the flavor gets drained out of us, so we all become part of the stew. We contribute to it that way, actually, so maybe that's how we contribute to the stew, is how you're saying. But the chickpea tries to jump out of the pot, and the cook knocks it back with a ladle, and he says, don't you try to jump out, right? You know, you think I'm torturing you, but I'm just giving you flavor, so you'll mix with the rices and spice and be the lovely vitality of a human being. Remember when you drank rain in the garden, that was for this. That's a wonderful phrase. Remember when we did that, that was for this.

[70:04]

And now you've got to give this back. Let's see, it's grace first, sexual pleasure, grace, grace, sexual pleasure, and then a burning fire begins and a friend has something good to eat. So in some sense, I think we are contributing all of our creative, but we have to do it in this big stew of a sangha here where sometimes it's joyful and sometimes it's not so joyful. At least that's been my experience. I find out that some of my, when I think of my creative tendencies, bump into what other people's creative tendencies are. Okay. And then we have to create a new creative tendency. Let's create a new way of being together. And that's what we're doing. I think that's what we want to do here, isn't it? Use our vitality in a way that contributes to come down off the mountain of the ego and don't spare ourselves in working for the common good in some way. And I think that's what we're all trying to do to the best of our ability, even if we fail in our own or other people's eyes often.

[71:10]

This is a little bit what Sam was talking about, about the pressure building up behind the floodgates. And I remember several years where I used to bike a lot and I would see that in the beginning of the day, actually throughout the whole day, I would be holding back as I would bike because I thought I have to have enough energy to make it through the day. And so I would never fully put it out there, except for a few times. And then I started to see that I did that in all aspects of my life. And I couldn't understand why I did that. And maybe I can't help this person, because I won't have enough time for myself. And just trying to understand what that What that fear is about, what that holding back is about.

[72:18]

Well, you know, Rebbe said, he's thought many times about how painful selfishness is. Even though we hold back ourselves from other people and the needs of other people again and again, ultimately, and not even ultimately, almost immediately, we feel some things not quite so healthy or comfortable in it. holding back something. I remember Tia came to me and said, can you be the Tenzo again? And I thought I was all done being the Tenzo, but the Tenzo had quit. And I would have, you know, if I could have run out of the room, if I could have found some kind of excuse, but I just remembered saying, you know, Tau Sahara, you know, don't hold back here. Give everything you got. And this is why you came, you know, hold back. So I said, okay, you know. And right now I'm being asked, you know, will I direct the spring show, you know, the Buddha's birthday pageant? Part of me says, oh, man, I don't want to, you know, harder, and I don't know if I'm, blah, blah, blah. But then I think, what am I holding back for? It's like that, you see?

[73:22]

Same thing. I'm holding something back from some request that comes to step forward. Now, there are times there's real reasons you have to hold back, but... Most of the time I've discovered my own life will hold back because I want to keep something in reserve for me, even though I don't admit it quite that way. I mean, it's some activity that's going to benefit, but it's really for me. And that seems to be part of our condition as human beings, maybe just building this survival system. Somebody has their hand. Oh, hey, Nick. Maybe related to what you're saying in terms of identity, I find it inspiring to know that there are fish that can fly and birds that can swim. But I'm also appreciating the notion that a leopard doesn't change its spots.

[74:25]

There's some, you know, a feeling of tolerance and helpfulness in that kind of situation. So, in your own experience, what are the things that you rely on, have faith in, or trust in, in terms of when you decide what animal you are? A monkey in a Buddhist robe is still a monkey. I don't want to be a monkey, but... I monkey around a lot. And that's the hand you're built? It's one of them. In the holy game of poker, you get more than one chance to get a different hand, and I'd rather be a leopard or something, but I think I'm a kind of monkey. But you know that.

[75:28]

I know that, and it's okay now, but it wasn't okay for a long time. I made a lot of people miserable. A lot of people miserable in my life because it wasn't okay. So you've come from that place because you have faith in it. I can swing from branch to branch now and say that's what I do. Time is running out for me. Then that's a part of it. As you get older you know that your days are numbered so you're just going to be what you are because you might not be here tomorrow. I'm going to enjoy being a monkey if that's what I am right now. If I happen to turn into a leopard or a tiger overnight, watch out. But it probably won't happen. So in terms of directing the play, in the spring, if you direct it, it's going to be the monkey who's directing, right? That's the only choice. Well, I mean, I'm using that metaphor.

[76:33]

I don't want to put too fine a point on it, but whatever I am, I can't say. Who will step forward? What identity will, what subpersonality, what nuance will come forward and exhibit itself when I finally put on the director's role? Who knows? And that's one of the reasons we should do it. I should do it to find out. Maybe I'll get my own chair with my name on it. A megaphone. David W. Griffiths. Does that answer it? Yeah, kind of. Let me say this. May there be a situation or a request that's made of you where you'll say, Oh, of course. Haven't you noticed?

[77:34]

I mean, I've said many times to people, no. It's not who I am. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that anymore. Don't ask me. I'm not going to be on the practice committee. I said that. But when I came here, when I came back from Tassajara, I'd had enough practice committees and meetings to last my lifetime. I said, I'm not going to be on it. Give me a break, you know. Now I can do it again. But for a long time I could say no. But years before that, I wouldn't say no. I'd say yes and then just exude resentment. You know? And so now I can say yes and then wholeheartedly give myself to it, difficult as it may be. Yes, Sue has it. Actually, to add on to Nick's question, is there some part of yourself that you think doesn't change? Some part of your identity that you really don't think... Well, you remember what I started out saying a couple of days ago? I said I had this revelation that I've always been here.

[78:37]

And what makes me think I won't, but that there's no here or I that I could ever get hold of in any of that. But that feeling, that feeling that you had when you're 5, when you're 10, when you're 20, when you're 60... I feel the same, the person said, that I felt when I'm 20, but my feet go clump, clump, clump. No. Everything else is changing but that feeling, that subjective sense, self-sense. What is that, you know? You can't find it. I can't find what that is because as soon as I try to express it, I have to express it in terms of self and other and role-playing and all of these words we're using. But it seems to supersede that or it seems to... Like quicksilver, you can't get a hold of it. But I also said at the beginning that we have a certain stance or posture we take in the world. And we kind of have a predominant, maybe one of the six realms. Maybe I'm not an asura.

[79:39]

I think I belong in the human realm. But I'm also an animal a lot. And then I'm a greed realm. That feels kind of familiar to me. I'm not in the hell realm for all reason. But my style is more greedy. I tend to be a fringe person. I like people, but I'm kind of on the periphery. I like to be on the periphery. And then I can be right in the center like I am now and feel very good with it. But I don't want to be in the center all the time. I have to get back and be anonymous. They say that's an Aquarian trait. I don't know. That's just another identity, you know. I'm an Aquarian. You've got another role I can play. I'm not talented. This is to Andrea, and it comes from Norman's talk yesterday. Art, no art, art.

[80:40]

Maybe that has something to do with... Art, no art, art. No art during practice, or not practicing content. So that's very easy for an author to say. Well, thanks a lot. But you know, I also... Somebody once said to me, why don't you turn your life into a work of art? And I thought, God, that's what Suzuki Roshi was. That's what all these remarkable human beings are. Their whole life is the work of art. And that's the wonderful aspect of it. We can turn our lives into works of art from moment to moment. And we do, actually. We actually do. Somebody had their hand up here. Oh, yes, you did. It's amazing to me how things all come together because I was wanting to ask you about the experience you had in the garden that you described in the first talk that you gave us with that sense of having been there forever. Are you able to say, my question is really about identity and language,

[81:46]

Are you able to say if that experience of you having been here forever was before thought? Or did you have some kind of experience which you then closed with, oh, I think I've been here forever? Well, the only way I can answer that is partly theoretically and part experientially. Theoretically, it is probably that all experience happens some instantaneous fragment just before the thought process sets in. That's how the mind works. But This came more as a flash and then immediately was put into, almost instantaneously, took the form of the expression I used, I have been here forever, what makes me think I'm not going to be? Even though subsequently I also said, what is this I, what is this here, and what is this forever? I can't find any part of that and yet, and yet, that's how it came.

[82:50]

But the feeling of that was kind of multi-dimensional or it was a very totally expansive feeling and absolutely knew it to be true. But couldn't say it other than the way I'm saying it. And it preceded, it seemed to precede language. It was prior to the condition of the arising of words. Because is it that that which preceded the arising of words, that's it, isn't it? That we sit on our cushions for and we study the Dharma. Is it ever more than just a tiny flash like that, even though it might change everything? Apparently for the people that live in that dimension all the time. Are you? Apparently. I haven't met so many, but I think there are. Go to India, that's where a lot of them are. They seem to live in a kind of jhana state. But that's not our practice really.

[83:54]

Our practice is just to get down in the kitchen sink level and see that as, you know, perfection of wisdom. Which is harder in a way. Getting into a state where you can manifest a lighter on your hand or something by thought. Like, who's that? Sri Baba? Is that the one? He's attempting fancy psychic tricks. I was respectfully referring to the experience. No, no, no, no, no. I know that. I understand that. Thank you. Thank you. But I can't answer other than the way I do. And the more I talk about it, the further it gets away. which is another phenomenon we must have noticed. Anyway, it's now 10.30, and we have to go sit, so thank you very much.

[84:43]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_87.02