Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming today, refugees from Christmas and the holidays. I'm supporting my Dharma notes on this great Buddhist text, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. And I'm very, very happy to be invited to be with you today and to thank you very much for coming. And if you're cold, you can come closer to the inside of the room. You're more than welcome. I want to speak this morning about my experience of Dhanaparamita or the paramita, the crossing over virtue of generosity and giving. And I am determined to do so by talking about the place of the gift of activism in our Buddhist meditation sangha.

[01:02]

So this is a great honor and privilege for me to be able to talk about what is closest to my heart, to my gardener's heart, this issue of being active, serving the world, saving all beings, front line messianic virtuous wish, says Bob Thurman, bellowed Bob Thurman from this seat many years ago. We from the more than 2,000 years ago, there is a system in the Buddhist practice of designating virtues that help us live our lives. The six paramitas have spread to ten virtues, and the first and foremost of these virtues is the virtue of giving, of being generous and of serving all beings with the gift of kindness. My root teacher Thich Nhat Hanh says the greatest gifts you can give are three, the gift of time,

[02:06]

the gift of material well-being, and I really want to talk about that today, and last of all the gift of non-fear, fearlessly facing our world and giving courage to those you practice along the path with. So my remarks and experience this morning comes from many, many years of practicing here at Green Gulch Farm and practicing very closely with other Dharma colleagues at work in the world, and I want very much to talk a little bit about the gifts of this practice. My husband, Peter, exhorted me to try to get through the Dharma talk without mentioning the millennium, so I'll apologize to him in the very beginning and acknowledge that we do find ourselves now poised at the end of a decade, end of a century, end of one thousand years, moving into the next emanation, no matter how you count.

[03:12]

We will cross the line and in a few days many of you will come and practice here with us at Green Gulch, sit for a good week before the turning of the new year and the new millennium, practicing meditation and living here with us. And on New Year's Eve this hall will be filled with refugees from a party-down kind of world, being in here quietly, turning toward the self and toward working together. The root meaning of apocalypse, which is often associated with millennial turning, means to uncover, to reveal. I think that in this time of so much work, recovery work and looking deeply at who we are, the vow to uncover and to give the gift of courageous presence, time and material well-being is a great offering. So from the Greek, apocalypse, you know the word kalypso, in the myth of Odysseus, kalypso

[04:19]

has her place of offering gifts to Odysseus and the eucalyptus tree means to cover. Apocalypse means to uncover or to reveal. So let's reveal together what it is we're about most closely aligned to at this time and in this season. I was thinking about giving this morning and in the days prior to today and feeling very influenced by the gift of the huge full moon that we've all participated in, receiving this gift. I'm imagining that most of you in this room have also found it very difficult to sleep and have done strange things out of the ordinary, events that haven't been seen for 133 years, like surfing at midnight in the Pacific Ocean down at Muir Beach or walking on the hills. We've seen the headlamps of bicyclists circling the hills throughout the solstice season.

[05:19]

It's been very wonderful. Or the little lamplight at Hope's Cottage reflecting the huge light of the moon and gathering on the winter solstice at Muir Woods to celebrate and sing, to build fire at the edge of the forest, as has been done for so many millennia, and to stand around the fire with our children, drinking hot apple juice. Lo and behold, a gathering of deer, human beings dressed as deer, let's put it that way, came into the clearing and danced in the dark, and we followed them into the woods lit by luminaria and came out to the moonlight. Some people came out as late as 1130 at night. What a rare gift to be able to walk together with all beings in the darkness and then to come out into the clearing and stand in the moonlight. And on the next dawn, the winter solstice, some of us in this room walked up to a meadow

[06:19]

on the flanks of Mount Tamalpais overlooking the Pacific and sat in silence, waiting the sun, standing up at its southernmost point on the horizon and gathering the forces of this season. So it's been a very wonderful time, a time of being outdoors, a time of, I hope, renewed simplicity and gratitude for the generosity of the world we live in, that we're privileged to live in in these times. I am completing a book I've been working on for six years, the full duration of my daughter's time in elementary school. She'll graduate from elementary school, and this elephant of a book will be born, and then it will have to get on the treadmill and grow slim and mean and lean. But this is a book about practicing meditation in these times within the garden.

[07:20]

And I've learned a lot, a tremendous amount, especially right now I'm working on a section about harvesting and learning what extraordinary riches we have here in North America, the gifts that we take so for granted, forgetting maybe as we drink a glass of cold water in the moonlight that women in Africa walk for five hours to have the luxury of clean water, and that luxury is greatly endangered. Two and a half hours to the spring, two and a half hours back, carrying the water on their heads. May we accept the gift of good, clean, clear water and be refreshed remembering our sisters and brothers for whom this is a true gift. All of this is up now. It's being harvested for me at this time. I'm thinking of a good friend of mine, a man who at the age of five contracted polio and has walked all of his life, since he was a five-year-old, he's my age, he's walked on

[08:26]

crutches. He's a very able person and very frugal. It's hard for him to be generous. He's a kind of tough being because his life has been tough, but he told me years ago when he was in Mexico, he saw a beggar on the street and walked over and gave the beggar some pesos and continued on feeling very proud of himself, only to be pursued by the beggar who pulled on his crutches, stopped him and returned the gift and gave him more money. I mentioned this in the beginning of the talk so that we don't associate giving with a kind of, I don't even know how to describe it, a kind of generosity that isn't genuine. I don't think about what we can give to others, but how we can receive together and be part of the same matchless work. Zen Master Matsu had a secret practice of weaving sandals out of reeds.

[09:35]

He wove sandals of all sizes and left them alongside of the road in Plum Village when we practice walking meditation with people who lost their legs and ability to walk during the Vietnam War. We take a vow to walk for those who don't have the ability to walk in the moonlight, and during the whole walking meditation, those who sit in wheelchairs with the folded stumps of their legs underneath them in Gassho until we come back, we really are walking together in that way, borrowing sandals, passing along the way. A huge question that has animated my 28 years of Zen meditation practice as a layperson has been, what is the connection between meditation practice and the life of the world, the wider

[10:37]

world, the so-called real world that we talk about, or the outside world, all these wonderfully quirky and inaccurate expressions of the great majority that surrounds us. My friend and colleague who describes this valley as a valley of ancestors asks the question which I mention every time I talk, every time it's my privilege to get up here, asking, well, is meditation and a meditation center a safe haven from the world or a field of action? So I give myself the gift of this question here at the turning of the year and give it to you too, and in fact, my experience is that it's often both, that sometimes we need a safe haven from an altogether crazy world in order to be more activated and more aware.

[11:41]

And by the same token, we often find we need to step across the line to engage in direct action, in speaking up, speaking out, speaking forth, speaking truth, in order to be more alive. I hope that after muffin time today, you will come back and we can join together in this room, pretend there's a fire in here, Jizo Bodhisattva, the one who's willing to go down into hell and be present with all beings who are in hell and to unmake hell in that journey can be the fire. And together we can sit here and talk a little bit about our experience of this dynamic balance between safety, a safe haven from the world, and direct connection with the world.

[12:45]

I know many of you are doing incredible work, and it would be a great gift to each other to share our experience. Our friend and teacher, Ralph Steele, who was visiting Zen Center, Ralph is a former Vietnam vet, African-American man who grew up in the Sea Islands along the southeastern coast of this country, and teaches Buddhism very vividly, began his talk by saying, what are you doing? What is your practice? So here in the dwindling hours of this 20th century, let's ask ourselves that question. What is our practice? What is the gift of our practice? What does it mean to return to the marketplace with gift-bestowing hands, which is what we say whenever a student who's been practicing in this temple goes back to the wider world. Oh, she's returning to the marketplace with gift-bestowing hands.

[13:49]

So what is the practice of so doing? The Buddhist tradition rests like a well-balanced stool on three legs. I love the image of the stool. Let's sit down on this well-balanced structure and be supported. I also really like the image of a trident, you know, because a trident is a good tool for picking up hay and making compost. So three prongs, three is a magic number. Those three legs, three prongs, are ethics, meditation, and wisdom, or understanding. They're the basis of studying of the precepts. They're the basis of living a well-balanced life. Our friend and teacher, Sulak Sivaraksa, who's a lay teacher from Siam, from Thailand, likes to remind us that the word for ethics, shila, actually means a natural way to live, because

[14:56]

in the old days there didn't need to be a designation of ethics, of ethical life. And only as we became more settled and organized did we need a code of ethics, or shila, to help us live. So we think of the precepts as the ethics that we follow. So that's one of the legs of the stool, ethical life, deep meditation, dedicated meditation. And don't think for one minute that it has to be cross-legged pretzel meditation. You can do wonderful meditation in a wheelchair, on a street corner by yourself, in prison, on the front lines of nuclear power plants. Deep meditation does not depend on sitting posture. And wisdom or understanding that balances the stool and holds it together, understanding that is based on a unification of compassion and wisdom together.

[16:00]

So in every meditation hall in the Zen tradition you find a seated figure of Manjushri, the main figure on this altar. Take a minute today to check him out. Usually Manjushri is depicted as a 16-year-old male with a bright mind and determination to look deeply at what's happening in the world and to stay seated in the middle of what's happening in the world. So it's a great balance. In this hall Manjushri faces Jizo, the compassionate, the figure of compassion who goes down into hell with Tara sitting here near Jizo. So they're meant to balance the stool of our life. We can look more closely at the figures later on this morning when we have question and answer period. We can walk around and welcome them or be welcomed by them. This three-legged stool is more ancient than Buddhist practice and is reflected by many

[17:03]

different cultures. I think it's correct to understand this balance as the rootedness of the democratic process, echoed by Socrates and by Confucius. This practice is ancient and timeless and true. So we have to be aware always of being too proud if we tend toward the meditation part of the spectrum. Don't get too proud of being a great meditator and if we tend toward the activist side, don't be too proud of being an activist. Somehow we've got to find the balance. That's why there's three. Two, you can wobble. Three, it's a little harder. Action is intention, said the Buddha, and living a life of action is very much the path of our practice. I've been thinking a lot about my friends and practitioners that I've lived with for

[18:12]

many, many years in this place. In particular, maybe because she telephoned yesterday, I've been thinking about my friend Stephanie Kaza, who practiced in this temple in the early 80s. Stephanie's a biologist and a Buddhist scholar. A Buddhist minister. She teaches environmental ethics at the University of Vermont in Burlington. It was a very sad day when she moved there six years ago. A sad day for me. But she maintains an active connection with this temple and in fact last autumn she was married in this room. It's a great celebration. She sent me yesterday for Christmas and New Year's a very beautiful book called Buddhist Peace Work. It is hot off the press and not in our bookstore yet, but I promise you it will be. Maybe it is, and I just didn't see it. This volume is a slim but very dense collection of the work that's happening in the Buddhist

[19:15]

tradition throughout the world. And in it there's a simple essay by my friend, by Stephanie, talking about her experience using four points that are fundamental to Buddhist teaching having to do with the gift of activism and meditation blended. So with your permission I'd like to go over these four points and then later we can discuss them, make them richer by your own experience. All good action turns from within toward the world, said Goethe a few centuries ago. Every excellent action turns from within toward the world. Once when I was talking to Reb he said, yes, and every excellent action turns from the world and illuminates what's within. So I like that balance. Social action begins with the ancient practice of repentance or of turning within and looking

[20:24]

at your motivation. In the Buddhist tradition one of the most ancient ceremonies that we practice every month is the ceremony of repentance at the full moon when we open the doors and let the moonlight stream into the temple. For example, we have practiced on summer evenings we've practiced the full moon ceremony outside on the grass in the light of the moon where we renew our vows and look again at how it is we live and how we work. Reciting the precepts, standing in the full moon, making the vow to be a face-to-face community of practitioners who are willing to live and die together is the origin of this ancient simple ceremony. But repentance has many different faces, especially in modern times. I think of the opportunity to face squarely a fear and sorrow, anger and deprivation that's

[21:28]

in our world. A teaching from a friend and scholar, Joanna Macy, a person who has a great deal of connection to Buddhism and the Buddhist practice, is the practice of the truth mandala where friends gather together in one room and are willing to squarely face the anger, deprivation, sorrow and fear that's coming up from our times and to speak, to testify and to repent our connection. This is an ancient practice. To find modern analogs for repentance seems really important. I look forward to discussing this with you. So first of all, repentance. Begin with repentance. And then let's move to resistance. I have some resonance with resistance.

[22:29]

Resistance means taking action that slows down the destructive momentum that we're facing in our times. Just coming to a place like this on New Year's Eve is a kind of resistance. Holding quiet, speaking what you know, resisting the urge to buy and to consume, resisting your own self-pride and self-hatred is necessary in these times. I don't want to sound preachy. I do want to explicitly talk though about resistance. I had the experience a few years ago when a young woman whom I treasure and who was in our first group of apprentices more than six years ago, left Tassajara and made the decision to go up to the ancient redwood forest and to take her place among active resistors, trying to stop the tide

[23:36]

of harvest, harvesting of the old ones. You know Jennifer Schneider without knowing you know her. She is the young woman who received pepper spray in her eyes and was on the front of the Chronicle newspaper. Seeing her there changed my life very definitely. A number of us went up to headwaters and crossed the line and actively resisted. We did crazy things. I went with two young women from this sangha and along with about forty other women, we did the ancient women's work of taking balls of yarn and wrapping the great ancient trees with yarn and what happened, we happened to cross the road that the lumber trucks go on and we made a huge web from about where I'm sitting to where Manjushri is sitting, a web of yarn on the road to entangle the loggers when they came to work. The guard who was sitting at the gate kept muttering, this is the stupidest thing I've ever seen in my

[24:41]

life and he had a pair of scissors and he went along behind us cutting the yarn and we were singing and chanting and we continued to weave a web across the road. Resistance can be ridiculous but there was something deeply solemn and powerful. And for me, I felt that when I crossed the line onto so-called private property to protect the ancient ones along with my younger sister, I had become more of a human being. I was stepping into my life, into my real life. So we made quite a mess of yarn on the road and we continued to do whatever we could and we have continued to do whatever we could. In my mind is the image of going to visit Jennifer in her small room that she shared with about 12 other people, all activists in the forest, and going to use the bathroom and closing the door and seeing her robes hanging on the back of the door and knowing that every morning she got up to chant and to pray

[25:45]

and to sit before doing her work. So resistance matters and never forget it for one moment. Practicing resistance is ancient, an ancient admonition and a necessary one and there are many ways to do so. The most, some of the most senior monks in Siam have taken up the practice of the forest tradition monks, of going into the forest and taking their saffron robes and ordaining the great trees, wrapping the trees in their robes, resisting logging by ordaining the trees. A few years ago, Stephanie and Reb and I, some of you may have been present, ordained the great oak tree that was in front of the office. Reb gave the tree the precepts and with about 200 people from this Sangha, we chanted and thanked that great being.

[26:45]

Great Precept Being was the Dharma name that Reb gave the tree and it was a wonderful experience doing that and remembering that when the tree did finally blow down a few winters ago, right around this time of year. But recognizing the range of elders and resisting the normal mind that says, oh don't be ridiculous, why would ordaining a tree help? And yet when the loggers came into the forest in Siam and saw those trees wrapped in saffron, they did not cut them, they recognized the robes. And the pilgrimage walks organized by these monks, the pilgrimage walks to places of environmental devastation, practicing walking meditation to the sites, resisting the movement of the industrial growth society by offering true presence and witness. And of course I think of Meili Scott, priest and teacher at Zen Center who now lives in the ancient redwood forest in Arcata, practices there.

[27:50]

Meili, a teacher for so many of us. Every month going to the gates of Lawrence Livermore Lab and holding a vigil, sitting there and of our friends who will go on New Year's Eve this year to the Nevada test site and join with Christian monks and practitioners from all over the world in civil disobedience, resisting the growth of a technology that takes life. Resisting and witnessing at the same time. And Joanna Macy encouraging us to bring our nuclear waste above ground so that we can see it rather than hiding it in the ground. And Mayumi Oda and so many of the friends who work cause Tanahashi, so many of our friends who've worked tirelessly in their own country, Buddhist practitioners who've taken on resisting their own culture, their own country,

[28:53]

suing Mayumi and Kaz, suing the Japanese government for wrongful behavior because of allowing plutonium to be received and exported from their shores. So these are actions that have real resonance. So consider resistance. Third point is root cause analysis. The Sink Sangha from the International Network of Engaged Buddhists, INEB and the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, a group of friends determined to sit together, to think together, to look at the roots and probably by looking at the roots to transform the roots, to recognize the roots of confusion and greed, hatred and delusion in our society and by thinking deeply, thinking radically, changing those roots, opening them up, having them spread out into new terrain.

[29:54]

I think not only scholars and activists have a place in this root analysis, root cause analysis, but also I'm finding this very, very much the case working with a number of young people, people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 70s, 80s, 80s, 90s, people in their 20s, people my son's age who know how to work the technology of our times and know how to make changes from within, looking at the roots and making adjustments. Very important. It's a wide band. Last of all, reclaiming moral culture. Permit me to read from His Holiness the Dalai Lama's acceptance speech when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold.

[31:11]

It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who've lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighboring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free. Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who've been appointed or elected. It lies with each of us individually. What is important is that we each make a sincere effort to take seriously our responsibility for each other and for the natural environment. So, how do we reclaim moral culture? This may be the greatest gift of all in our times,

[32:16]

to ask that question and to work on it together. How do we do it? How do we adapt the precepts to the life of our times? I have a few examples from my experience of practicing Buddhism on the front lines with friends and neighbors. In San Francisco, there's a wonderful Cambodian restaurant run by two people, a married couple, Sokuen and her husband, Keith. I can't remember the name of the restaurant. I'm sorry, but I bet it'll come to me, and maybe if some of you know her, know this couple, you can tell me. I think it may be called Angkor Wat. Is that right, Angkor Wat? In the war that has wrecked Cambodia for the last decades, Sokuen lost 31 of her family members, and she has worked in this country tirelessly

[33:19]

to open up possibilities for peace and justice in her country. Taking a small percentage of the money that they raise in their restaurant, she's put aside money and she ran for political office a few years ago and was defeated, plans to run again. But the money that she's raised and that other people have given to her has gone into creating a special home in Phnom Penh for young women, ages, believe this or not, 9 to 14, young girls who are sold into prostitution. So here's a woman who, here's a family who raises, makes their living selling food in San Francisco and is turning some of the money back to restore, revitalize moral culture in their country. With $18,000 that they raised last year, they managed to rent a small house in Phnom Penh where I think about 20 young women are seeking refuge,

[34:20]

learning on rickety old sewing machines how to do peace work with all the meanings of that word, how to do peace work and to sell their sewing to keep themselves off the streets. It's an extraordinary project. Mahagosananda is her mentor and guide. Mahagosananda, who when visiting Cambodian refugee camps was told he would be arrested if he chanted and stood in front of 20,000 people and practiced the old chants. And found the people in the camps responding, resisting, and speaking out. So with Mahagosananda near the sewing machines and these young women working to restore moral culture, there's tremendous, this is a tremendous gift. And Sokulun and Keith are hoping to return to their country eventually and to live there more full-time and to start other centers.

[35:23]

I think of the hospice work that's gone on in this community, being willing to sit by the dying, a kind of moral culture I learned a lot about last year, sitting with my parents, maintaining presence. I remember a year ago meeting with Ram Dass at Spirit Rock, those of us who've been active in the hospice movement, a couple of hundred of us in that hall. We spent the day sitting and he came in and talked a lot about what it was like to be alive after a stroke and how he had been anticipating meeting with this group of hospice workers who restore moral culture in our times by sitting at the bedside. He said he felt he could take all the time in the world to talk about what he knows because of that ability to be with people who have sat at the bedside. And I think in particular of the work that's now going on

[36:31]

from so many different meditation groups to be present in the life of our prisons. The Buddhist Peace Fellowship and the BASE program have strong prison projects, teaching meditation, being present through writing, through speaking, through counseling, and Zen Center. So many of our students are interested in this vital connection. This summer we had a class in looking at Buddhism behind bars. I'd like to read one or two comments from prisoners about the effect of meditation in the prisons. I've noticed now that I've been meditating here and in my cell that when I see what I used to call my enemies or my friends, I don't see any difference. It's all just life moving along. And just to balance that,

[37:36]

in this place all I feel is anger on top of anger. What if I don't have any kindness at all left in me? And one more comment. I want to take the same dedication, skill, focus I had when scoring a heroin fix and apply it to doing good in the world. I've discovered a kindness in me that is amazing. I feel this is a little tricky to talk about, restoring moral culture. It may sound a little bit like my friend paying the beggar and being chased by the beggar, because those of us who've been working in the prisons know quite well that the real gift comes back ten, twenty, thirty-fold.

[38:42]

When I stood with my Dharma brother Jim Needles, who was for many years living a life organized by cocaine, so he knew inside out the world of drug abuse and is now teaching meditation in the prisons. When I stood with him and together we offered the precepts, the Buddhist precepts, to four men who asked us to ordain them in the City Jail Eight, the True Freedom Sangha, they called themselves. And when I stood there next to the altar that one of the men had prepared from scrounging in the kitchen, he found a box lid and lined it with aluminum foil. And each man gave a gift of what was most precious to them. And in each case it was a letter from someone who loved them and sent them a letter in prison. They rolled the letters up into little coils and made a seat for a cut-out image of the Buddha

[39:45]

that they put on top of the rolled letters. And by cutting letters out of the newspaper and pasting them on with toothpaste, True Freedom Sangha. That was our altar. We were in the fourth floor of City Jail Eight in a glass cage. Beautiful men wearing orange, completely available to the passers-by. We noticed that there were many, many people gathered pressing their noses against the little glass cell where we were observing this ancient rite of restoring moral culture by sitting on a three-legged stool together and receiving the gift of the precepts. I have great gratitude for the work that's being done now in the prisons and in our shelters, for the homeless chaplaincy program of this county that Lee is working on, Lee and many others, for the ability to face the question

[40:45]

of how to restore moral culture within our times and in our own backyard. The BASE program, the volunteer program that's starting up in a month or so, working with homeless people in the city as part of the Buddhist training on the street, on the front lines. I'd like to close by coming back a little closer to Gringoltschen, thanking all of you who participated in the Children's Wreath Project that you endure every Christmas when you kindly buy all the misshapen wreaths that have been crafted by clever little hands. This project began when Aaron and Noah and Taya and Sarah and Robin and Jesse were about eight years old, and they recognized that a family in Vietnam could be supported for $200 a year.

[41:49]

And they did some quick calculations and thought that they might be able to raise enough money to support a family for a year, and they began to make wreaths by picking up the scrappings and leavings from our wreath projects and creating beautiful wreaths and selling them. And then the money was sent into Vietnam, and they made a direct connection with the family that received their $200. They wanted to know how the money was going to be spent, what it would buy, and how it could be that one whole family could live on that work for a full year. They continued the project up until the time they graduated from high school. They're still doing really good work, and they remember their training. The little kids who live here now

[42:53]

just in this holiday season raised a little more than $500. Part of that money will go to the Marin Abused Women's Shelter in this county, and a big part of it will go to Kosovo, where the children will be donating money, hopefully, warm hand to warm hand, to a great project called the Post-Pessimism Project. This is coming from high school students, Albanian and Serbian high school students, who know they have to go past pessimism to rebuild their country. So they'll receive $311.25 from the Green Gulch children. This is a good way to restore moral culture in our times. So these are only a few, just a very few, stories from the front, the closing of this century and...

[43:54]

decade, century, and millennium. Thank you very much for listening with care and attention. The greatest gift of all may be that, being willing to sit together and listen. I see in the audience, I see a new friend, a woman I don't know too well, who's just moved to Green Gulch. She's also a frontline activist. And yesterday she was telling me that, as a young woman, she recognized what it means to have her father and brother be involved in the nuclear industry. As a young woman, she expressed concern to one of her father's friends who worked for the Bechtel Corporation. What are you going to do with all the nuclear waste? And he said to her something like this, Honey, probably don't you worry your pretty little head about this. Honey, that may be a problem, but by the time that is really a problem,

[44:56]

we'll have figured out a way to solve it and to make a profit. Wow. That kind of attitude led her to produce a beautiful film, or to be in connection with a group of people that produced a beautiful film about Chernobyl. That kind of attitude and our experience as meditators has to give us the courage to repent, to resist, to look at the root causes and to restore moral culture in our times. And never for a moment, not even for a moment, lack the belief that we can do it. I close with this prayer. This is from His Holiness the Dalai Lama's recent book Ethics for a New Millennium.

[45:57]

And this is an ancient chant and short prayer. May I become at all times, both now and forever, a protector for those without protection, a guide for those who have lost their way, a ship for those with oceans to cross, a bridge for those with rivers to cross, a sanctuary for those in danger, a lamp for those without light, a place of refuge for those who lack shelter, and a servant to all in need. Thank you very much. A happy Deep New Year to each of you, and may we continue lifetime after lifetime in our practice together. Thank you.

[46:45]

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