If a hawk watched television, can only see gaps. It doesn't hold together as a picture. There's not enough information there. I mean, a mouse in a field is a huge amount of information, but not a photograph of a mouse. A friend of mine who's played for the whales off the coast of Alaska says they won't come up and listen to recorded music, no matter how big your speakers are. But if you get a few people on a raft with a guitar and a violin and a saxophone, they all come up.

[01:14]

And breach in appreciation. A friend of mine was sitting in this little raft during one of these trips. And right beside the raft, maybe eight feet away, this huge whale suddenly came up almost to its full length out of the water above them. And then slid straight down back in without making a splash practically. He could have fallen on it. No, just went straight up and came back down. My friend said, I just looked and I found my whole body saying, I've seen a god.

[02:22]

The leaves, you know, from my window I can see the leaves. A breeze signals the trees. And all over, one and one and one and one leaf fall. But I see it happens as if by a signal, but I see uncoordinated time. And sometimes we can find ourselves in plant time. Or tree time.

[03:22]

Stone or brick. Brick time is different than stone time. No, berry time. Sometimes we can feel the time of another human being which they don't feel themselves. We can feel our own time of childhood again emerging, often in zazen. Oder wir können unsere eigene Kindheitszeit oft im Sasen auftauchen spüren.

[04:52]

Es ist wirklich ein Geheimnis, wie alle diese unterschiedlichen Zeiten still can be understood as occurring in some kind of envelope of synchronized time. Dass die alle irgendwie auftauchen können oder drin sind in einer Art Unless you have atomic clocks or something to measure at an extremely fine level. But the mystery of synchronized time doesn't interest me too much. But the many phases of human and other being time that are parallel to each other Uncoordinated.

[05:55]

Unrelated almost to each other. And parallel often even within ourselves. So now I'm speaking about the way continuity generates history. We human beings are historical beings. We exist over and through time. And continuity, our experience of continuity can be understood as a current. A current that pulls things into our personal history. Where we locate our continuity creates a current which generates our particular history.

[07:19]

And the history, But when you find your continuity in thought, you generate a particular kind of history. And you generate a particular kind of body. You turn your body mostly into a kind of pedestal for the mind. Pedestal? No, that's good. No, a pedestal is like what a statue stands on. Okay, in the whole sentence. Oh, the whole sentence.

[08:19]

When your continuity is a mental current, you generate a particular kind of mind and body. Then you create a very special mind and body. And when the current is a mental current, you on the whole create a body which is primarily a pedestal for the mind. A body you hardly notice unless it hurts. A body which gets sick without your mind knowing it. Yeah, I have a friend who has written a book recently on dreams. And what opened him to dreaming, Mark Barish, is that he had a physical exam and he was fine.

[09:42]

But he was a young man, but he dreamed he had cancer. And he went to the doctor, no, no, you're fine. So he dreamed again he had cancer. And the dream was so real that he insisted and the doctor discovered, yes, he had cancer. So somehow, at least his dreams told him, yes, your body is sick. So we notice our body when it hurts or it's stiff or something. But unless you enter the way, capital W, you don't usually have your continuity the current of continuity running through your body.

[11:02]

Rooted in your body. And one of the themes of the Sandokai is to enter the way. And the poem is about diverting the stream of continuity, the current of continuity into the body. The poem is an obstacle. The poem is a gesture. Yeah. If you understand the poem, I'm sorry for you. If you take the poem as a prescription, As a prescription.

[12:09]

As a gesture. Not just one gesture. But each word is a gesture. Not to be coordinated into a single understanding. Each word, every word is a gesture in the midst of a context. Every word, each word is a gesture that creates a context. That drags a context with it. Each word is a Gesture that wants to fly out of the context.

[13:13]

Not fly out of the context into a dictionary. Where it's trapped like a dead canary. In a mining disaster. It wants to fly out into your context. To breathe again in another kind of time. So the practice of mantra and why words and mantras are often sounds more than meaning. Because often if you know the meaning of a word, you lose the sound of the word. It flies into the dead air of the mind. It stops vibrating in your body.

[14:33]

When it vibrates in the body is when it begins to awaken another context. I'm an amateur in an old troubadour tradition. Yeah, older than the 12th and 13th century French troubadours. But sometimes a tradition that goes back before Buddhism in which you sang with others to come into and understand, a going forward through others. So, I mean this, Shido wrote this as a poem. Not because it was kind of customary to write poetry.

[15:39]

But because poetry was considered the way... You know, you don't see sunlight until it hits an object. So in a way, the poem is a kind of trying to pull up out of language into the light. To take language out of discourse into embodiment. Yeah, and this goes way back before Buddha's time. When the song entered us into another time and another silence.

[17:06]

So Shido is still in this tradition, not so long removed from India. Und Shido ist immer noch in dieser Tradition, die sich noch nicht so weit entfernt hatte von Indien. Of the song as the net of the way. Das Lied als Netz des Weges. The song that cut you into the embodied way. Das Lied, das euch in... the song that is a net like that catches a fish that catches your body into the way and releases it into the embodied current. So each one of the words of the poem

[18:09]

It's written in a way as part of the tradition. But it's like a fish in a sluice. Yeah, and it sort of wants to get out of the sluice. It's heading toward, you know, thinking and understanding. And the fish is kind of flipping around. Do I do have to go there? It leads toward the dictionary. And it wants you to pluck it out. And let it swim in your waters. Do you find it in its effect? It's generating your context. Yeah, we're not just natural human beings. Born, squirting out of a woman.

[19:36]

And then we just grow up. The body and mind that is generated is created by the culture. A so-called wolf child can probably never learn language. And one of the things we do is primarily for all kinds of reasons, we Through education, bring the child out of a physical current into a mental current. And you change its history and you actually change its flesh.

[20:42]

And the Sandokai is trying to sing us back into the way. But you've got to let each word sing in you. And it's surprising, but the context of the poem is so subtle and so big that the words, which were Chinese and then Japanese and now English and German, still have the life of the original fish. You may think this is Chinese to you, but it's not. These words can Transform your context too.

[22:13]

Now just as it's virtually impossible for a wolf child to be, to learn English. Or German, learn language. Once the current that establishes your mind and body That establishes and collects your history. And is shared by your friends, your family, your spouse, your co-workers.

[23:15]

Your history, the history that generates your body and mind is locked in place like granite buildings built into the architecture of your culture. And it's very very very difficult to change that current. And it is incredibly difficult to change the current or the direction of this current. Because all your personal history holds it in place. It's kind of a big group. And it flows down this groove.

[24:46]

And it's the way you love your friends. It's the same groove your parents are in, your kids are in, your friends are in. You almost feel Illegal. A criminal. At least uncompassionate. If you drill some holes in this groove and all the water runs out. Your friends look at you and say you're a dry guy. What's wrong with you? You're filled with silence and not discourse. You're all presence and not present.

[25:48]

That's hard to do. It's almost as hard as a wolf child to learn a language. Das ist sehr schwer zu tun. Es ist fast so schwer wie für ein Wolfskind eine Sprache zu lernen. You have the whole apparatus of 2600 years of the wisdom teaching of Buddhism. Aber ihr habt diesen ganzen Apparatus zur Hilfe von 26 Jahrhunderten buddhistischer Lehre. You sit and cross your legs till they... Feel like you're dying. And occasionally, from your observing mind, you take a look down at your body.

[26:49]

You think, what are you doing down there? Why are you so stupid to hurt like this? We feel good up here in the mental sluice. The pain gets really big, you start having erotic thoughts. Not too bad up here. Erotic and neurotic. Both. All you have to do is open the valve and let all the sense of current and continuity flow into the body. And surprisingly, it was mostly mental pain.

[28:06]

You open the gate and mostly the pain goes away. There's some discomfort maybe, stiffness, but you feel fine. You can't believe it. A minute ago you were ready to die, and now you feel not so bad. Steif? I'm not a bear. But the current doesn't know where to go now. It just stuck there. So it starts climbing back up. And within a few minutes, you're hurting like mad again.

[29:08]

So it's very difficult for some, maybe obvious reasons, to divert the current of continuity. into the body. The body which has so much capacity to know so many kinds of time. And as we get older And more and more of our life flows in the sluice of mentation. The sluice of mentation. The faster the years go by.

[30:15]

One year is shorter than a month when you were a child. Do you want this kind of work? Is it worth it? Maybe you need it, but maybe you also need this other kind of life. Which generates another history and another body. The embodied mind And that's what you're practicing sitting zazen.

[31:15]

More than anything else, you're trying to open up the embodied mind. And this mind, this embodied mind, Whereas the Sandokai says the leaf generates the root. This is not just a teaching that the root controls the leaves. This is a teaching where the leaves transform the roots. So the way as it meets your face through practice through entering the embodiment which is what the way means

[32:22]

You begin to transform the roots in the darkness. Just practicing mindfulness. Mindfulness which is open in the embodied present. which locates you and places you and particularly when you can hold to keep to the one and as I suggested at the beginning of our week Where you can enter into a continuity of mindfulness in this place.

[33:28]

In this location. Leaves and roots begin to appear. And the Alaya Vishnana, the storehouse consciousness, which is way beyond the unconscious, which includes, includes, includes all the silence and times of your history, which is not edited by, selected by consciousness, productive consciousness, stuck in the narrow light of consciousness,

[34:35]

this inclusive, unedited mindfulness, when it's sustained as its own continuity, transforms the alaya-vijjana into mirror wisdom, that's the tradition, in my experience, transforms the alaya vijnana into mirror wisdom. Which Hakuin Zenji says, the light of this mirror is pitch black. And when I say silence, I mean the silence of evening turning to light.

[35:44]

You know, the word crepuscular in English means the granular, grainy light of evening. abenddämmerung heißt auf Englisch diese körnige Lichtqualität des Abends. When evening turns to light. Wenn der Abend sich in Licht verwandelt. When dawn turns to darkness. Wenn der Morgengrauen sich in Dunkelheit verwandelt. This mindfulness and our alive vision become what we call mirror wisdom, which is constantly transforming. and has the unimaginable resources of everything all at once.

[36:59]

This is a new kind of current and continuity. and transforms our history, and our mind, and even our body. And we begin to be able to be in, as I said in the beginning, the time of the tree. Or the time of the pond. Or we find the sky shining in our eyes. And we find the many human times In this room.

[38:10]

Which are many more than 17 or 18 or 19. And how enriched we feel. Even if we only know this momentarily, we've entered the way. And more and more we can feel the way as the way we live. So today I tried to give you some feeling of where this poem is coming from. And how it's speaking about the way.

[39:11]

And the fields which interact and don't interact. Time which is parallel and not coordinated. How we can change the current which creates our history. Which creates the body and mind which can enter the way.

[40:12]

Such is the obstacle of this poem. Thank you very much. The graves have been left empty, and I have to send them back to you.

[41:53]

You are living in such a terrible place, that I even want to cry. vare mankenonjiri surukkho to etari negawa kuwa nyorai o shin jitsu nyo geshi tate matsuran

[43:11]

I am vulnerable to all hell, but I can't ignore all the sorrow that I've been wrought by. It makes me heartache when that is all I've been doing, and I've lost my mind. You know that I shouldn't say it, but I will. I tell you, I don't have time to think about it. You know that I shouldn't do it, but I just don't have time to think about it. Good morning. And we've, what, lost two people? That changes things a little. I mean, maybe some of the information I speak about is the same, but the way it

[44:15]

glued together or its direction is about who's here. That was long. Longer than what I said. But I look around and I see enough blue here. Okay. You know, there's certain styles that have to do with Zen practice. One is you don't look around. You try to kind of restrain your senses from finding an object. And you try to let everything appear in you so you really feel the whole room but you don't do it out of interest, out of mental interest or curiosity.

[45:31]

At the same time, you try to do each thing that appears 100%. Strangely enough, you don't try to do it right. Just try to do it 100%. If it's chanting, you chant. It's not about whether you like it or not. Because the fundamental world can't be discriminated. What appears, you do. That's all. What appears, you do. Yeah, anyway, this is the basic kind of attitude and sense of it.

[46:39]

But it means, I think, that you do have to have some sense of dharma and of mindfulness. So this morning I want to try to give you a kind of practical picture of practice. Merging with principle, in early Buddhism, The principle in the early days especially meant the conviction that you were inseparable from Buddha nature. It's the dynamic, the psychological, the psychology of, the psychology, the alchemy of conviction.

[48:03]

The psychology, alchemy of conviction is pretty much identical to faith. But it's not faith in something outside you, but a conviction that this is possible. You know, one of the big shifts in Buddhism, again, is the shift from the Buddha, who is one who is awake, to the Buddha, which is the Tathagata Garbha, the Tathagata, excuse me, a coming and going. Tathagata means to come and go. So here Buddha doesn't just simply mean the guy who's awake. but to enter into how things exist in a movement of coming and going.

[49:25]

And that translated into the Buddha as the lineage. And then we start having Buddhas before Buddha. And sometimes we then chant the seven Buddhas before Buddha. Because if Buddha isn't an isolated phenomena, but something that happens... through human beings maturing each other, then there had to be Buddhas before Buddha. So what Buddha is, is a kind of lineage of Buddhas. That lineage is possible because we are ourselves inseparable from Buddha nature.

[50:44]

And thus a Buddha is possible in this time, in this generation, within people you know, within yourself. That was good. You remembered all that. And then if Buddha is a lineage stretching through time, then Buddha is also a horizontal lineage. A lineage in this present moment, in this present generation. So then we have bodhisattva activity. A bodhisattva activity is to express a kind of shared Buddha.

[52:01]

A shared Buddha. For instance, Buddha might be this group of people right now. So you don't have to think, oh, maybe I'm the one that's the Buddha. But you can have the feeling that yes, we'll all participate in making this presence a Buddha presence. So we can understand bodhisattva activity or bodhisattva practice as bringing forth the presence of Buddha in each person, in each relationship.

[53:19]

It may only be present for a moment, but it can be present now, here, in this world. So you could say, oh, in a particular sesshin, whatever Buddha is, it seemed like the presence of Buddha was manifest during this sesshin. Or in this seminar we're in now. This teaching and practice week. Perhaps there have been moments where we could say, yes, something like Buddha was present.

[54:22]

It's not you or me, but something that happened among us. And you can have a society or a group of people where something sick and even evil feeling happens. And you can have a group of people or a society in which presence of Buddha floats to the surface in the way people act. And this would be a Buddhist conception of society, not simply as a nation or a democracy. or some political definition of equality or something, but a society which is also defined through understanding relationships among each other,

[55:42]

In a way that lets the presence of bodhisattva or bodhisattva presence or buddha presence float to the surface. And that presence which we can generate also helps create Buddhas. So Buddhas are generated horizontally as well as vertically, a horizontal lineage as well as through a vertical lineage in time. So here we have a more subtle concept of Buddha that's part of a lineage practice. So in this sense, your faith is a conviction that this is possible.

[57:00]

And a sense of responsibility for practice. And we have various sort of ceremonies. And it's partly in the ordination ceremony. Where you vow basically to never Stop maintaining the practice. So this is a sense of conviction and responsibility.

[58:04]

And this is part of a kind of deeper precept, taking a precept to practice. We could say this is merging with principle. A sense of conviction and a sense of, yes, this is the way we can most fully realize our humanness together. Our humanness, which in its fullest sense we call maybe Buddha-ness, Buddha-nature, no, Buddha-ness, I said.

[59:12]

It's sometimes said the practitioner plunges into the sea of practice every day like a fisherman. It doesn't mean you do anything special. Just enter practice every day. Enter zazen, enter mindfulness. You have this feeling of merging with principle. Accepting the conviction and responsibility. That Buddha nature is inseparable from us. And is most fully activated through our practice with others.

[60:23]

So that's also an understanding of Sangha. And we can also speak about entering the way. As I said to someone, as each step creating a feeling of coherence. Within that coherence you take the next step. So you feel you're on the way when coherence leads to coherence. You're not planning ahead. You just feel the immediate coherence. When that's present, you let that lead you to the next coherence.

[61:26]

And you're able to recognize when others seem to have maps of your own life. When others have of your life? Yeah. Maybe that's a clumsy way to say it. The klutzy hot sattva. That's German, so you don't have to translate that. You can find it in any lexicon. You feel something in your own life where in some way you start feeling something similar in others' lives.

[62:31]

As if others have a vision which is almost like a map that interlocks with your map. Which interlocks with your own map? Yeah, which sort of, you know, like the road on one leads to the road on the other. Or a kind of glue, you feel. And that's when you have a sense of a sangha. You share something with different people still, people you wouldn't even know socially or, you know, not people you might go to dinner with. You're socialized differently. Maybe you don't have much in common, it seems.

[63:33]

But you have somehow in common something that makes you want to practice with them. Where you feel you're on the same road map or same way. Now on the altar, the incense burner is in the middle. And usually incense burners have three legs. And you put one leg toward the front and two legs toward the back.

[64:36]

And you take off the top of the incense burner. And place it to the right and back of the incense burner. You don't place it where there's the most room. That would be a mental organization. The altar is a physical narrative. assuming most people are right-handed, you don't take the incense burner top off and say, where's the most room?

[65:38]

That's mental. No. No matter how crowded it is. Maybe everything's on this side. Still, you take it off and you put it down naturally where your hand would put it down. And the altar's meant to make you feel like you're really there. You're really there. So when you bow, you look at the altar, and you feel a straight line right through your body, right up to the middle of the incense burner, right up to the nose of the Buddha. If it's not there, you almost can't bow.

[66:40]

Because when it's there, there's a kind of subject object kind of disappear. You kind of open up right along that line. And you kind of plunge into the bow. Disappearing. So when I go up to the altar, I can see that who arranges the altar, this is true in Johanneshof and Crestone, every altar I go to, I can see that the persons who arranged the altar weren't really there. They didn't feel every object on the altar with their body.

[67:43]

Yeah, they sort of, well, that's sort of in the middle. But if it's even that much off, when you start to bow, you can feel something, ew, what's wrong here? So the altar is a kind of physical narrative. Which lets you bow. And disappear. Now this is a good example of, it's a small thing, you know, where you put the top of the incense burner. But it's a difference between a mental organization of something and a physical narrative organization of something. So you can see that again in Sandokai.

[69:20]

It's organized the way you read, more like a novel isn't a book of philosophy. It's organized the way you get interested in a subject. A novel is written, it's not philosophy. It's written in the way that you get interested in the characters of the novel. So texts like the Sandokai, poems like the Sandokai, are organized in the way you get interested in, the way you experience the reading of. Okay. What I'm saying, I'm just trying to, you know, I don't know why we're doing it this week, but introduce you to this, some of the aspects of a yogic world.

[70:33]

Which are found in little details. Usually the little details are the most telling. Okay, so now let me try to speak about Buddha nature. Okay, now one of the traditions in Buddhism is to go along with people's beliefs. And one way to go along with people's belief is to change the names of what they believe. And you can see that in early Buddhism. Taoism and Buddhism and Confucianism shifted names back and forth.

[71:38]

But once you take over the name, say from Take over a Taoist name and bring it into Buddhism. So the Taoists think it's the same thing. But you change the way it's practiced. Things like that. It's just a way to absorb and yet not challenge too much a culture. So it might be a typical Buddhist practice to let people think the Buddha nature is a kind of soul.

[72:42]

But if you're serious about practice, that doesn't work very well. It's good enough for faith practice. But not good enough for conviction, responsible conviction practice, as I put it. Now, I find Westerners are willing to give up the self. And they're willing to give up God. Not everyone, but a lot of people are willing to give up God. And a lot of people are willing to give up heaven. But according to surveys, 65% of No, 85% of Americans believe in heaven.

[73:57]

I suppose if you live in America, you ought to believe in heaven. There must be something better than America. Thank you. But while something like 85% believe in heaven, only 65% believe in hell. I walk along the street and I think, 85% of these people believe in heaven. Yeah, sometimes I feel I'm on the wrong planet. But this is my planet.

[74:57]

Okay. Yeah, and a lot of people are... Anyway, willing to give up these things. Not too many people, particularly Europeans, are willing to give up the idea of soul. We have such an ingrained habit of thinking in entities. verwurzelte oder eingeschriebene Gewohnheit von Entitäten, dass wir irgendwie doch eine Entität sind. Und dass wir kein festes Selbst haben, dann gibt es aber zumindest da unten drin irgendwo doch eine Seele.

[75:59]

So eine Art Gefühl haben wir schon. But if everything's changing, if you really get it or believe or see that everything's changing, there can't be any entities. And I think most people can hear this and they simply don't believe it. Or they may think they're Buddhists. They may think they believe it. But if they're suddenly sick with a serious disease, or dying, they find themselves praying. they find themselves asking for a priest or a minister.

[77:18]

I know a number of famous Buddhist writers in America who, when they were dying, became Christian. It's very deeply ingrained. You know, sometimes when I've been in a very difficult place, In the middle of the night I wake up. And I was brought up as an atheist. I find myself, oh dear God, please help me. And I say, stop that, stop that. But the way my personality is developed as a Western person, it reaches out.

[78:41]

So I say, stop that. So I say, Buddha, please help me. Okay, so now I say. Dickie, you help me. That doesn't help very much. Richard, okay, I say, Richard, you help me. Roshi, Roshi, are you there? It's hard to, how am I going to help myself? I'm in trouble. I don't have a dynamic of knowing how to turn inward in a way that feels as satisfying as turning outward to some kind of God.

[79:41]

To shift that habit, the way one is defined or structured. To trust in the way. To trust, as Sukeshi said, in things as it is. To really find that kind of trust really shifts you into being a Buddhist.

[80:46]

Okay. Okay, so if there aren't entities, then there are functions. So we find that in the Sandokai. What's it say? Something like, all things have their function. And the depth of that point is lost in the other translation because it says each thing has its merit. That's a kind of soul. Yeah, it's a kind of entity collector. I mean, merit is, you know... Okay, let's stay with function. Let's stay with function. Okay.

[82:02]

So now I'm trying to get you behind the terminology I used yesterday or the day before. Of mirror wisdom. And the light of the of the light which is pitch black. I brought that in just to give you a sense that I'm not making this all up. This has been sort of practiced through by generations. Okay. So I think you have the idea or you can stay with the image.

[83:14]

I said the way where you find your continuity is a kind of current. No. This is a turning point in your own practice. To notice how you establish your continuity. Mm-hmm. And whether that sense of continuity is based on a subtle sense of permanence or seeking for permanence. Even if you don't believe in permanence. Selbst wenn ihr nicht an die Beständigkeit glaubt... But your personality is shaped around a subtle seeking for permanence, even if you don't believe in it.

[84:40]

Aber wenn eure Personalität irgendwie dennoch subtil darauf aufgebaut ist, auf dieser Suche nach... You got it wrong. If your personality, your identity, is structured around a seeking for permanence, implies the possibility of permanence, even if you don't believe in permanence, that the way your personality is structured or identity is structured, it would feel best if the world was permanent. Then, in effect, you believe in permanence. Because your belief doesn't mean much.

[85:52]

You're functioning as if the world was potentially permanent. Maybe it'd be better if we all spoke Chinese. As I jokingly said yesterday, all of this may be Chinese to you. In English, we say it's all Greek to me. But you're European, so you have to say Chinese. Vacation in Greece, so you know. Yeah, this is Spanish. Oh, I did it too wrong. It's Spanish. Oh, you also say all Spanish to you. Well, that seems crazy.

[86:53]

You don't say that in America because half the population speaks Spanish. So, if we spoke Chinese... Which I studied Chinese a little, but I don't really know it. But my impression is... Particularly early Chinese. Every character can be every part of speech. Every character. According to context, it can be a noun or a verb. So every word has impermanence built into it. In German, you have actually a larger percentage of verbs than English. The German has a much smaller vocabulary, but has more verbs, I think, than English.

[87:58]

But English is predominantly nouns. So English itself, if you speak English, it's always implying permanence. It's a tree. It's not treeing. English is implying permanent. English always implies things are permanent. Yeah, when you say tree, it's a noun. It sounds like it's permanent. If you make it a gerund and you'd say, every time you looked at a tree, you saw treeing, then there's a sense of impermanence. So I run into fear as well. You run into her. Yeah, that means you see yourself.

[88:59]

And I say, how's view-wearing today? How is senkinen today? Gerharding. How's Gerharding going? If you start renaming the world like this, you start feeling the impermanence. How's Helmutting going? I don't know. Okay, so Finding a way to see non-substantiality.

[90:17]

So, practicing maintaining the one. In Zen tradition, there's a four-character phrase. maintaining the one without wavering. And this is a, as I said the other day, a direct practice without stages. Okay, now sometimes this is called to see the world with the eye of non-substantiality. So in this sense, maintaining the one means maintaining the constant awareness that the world is non-substantial.

[91:21]

Or to always recognize that everything is a construct. And not just intellectually recognize it, but participate in the construction and deconstruction. So you sense the appearance and disappearance, the flow within consciousness itself. So maintaining the one means maintaining this awareness. Okay, so part of this is noticing, starts with noticing where you establish your continuity.

[92:38]

Okay, so now if I really give you this as a Dharma task, and you don't just hear this as something interesting that I might say, or boring because I've said it so often, but rather you say, okay, This is serious. Where do I find my continuity? And you recognize that where you find your continuity establishes your personal history. Because your continuity is also a current. And just like a current in the mountain stream or in the plains gathers mud, gathers leaves, etc., the current gathers things into your karma.

[94:03]

Yeah. You know, kids in English-speaking countries have a saying, sticks and stones can break your bones, but names can never hurt you. So somebody says, you jerk. You say, sticks and stones can break your bones. And then somebody says, you're a bad guy. And then they say, yeah, stones and bones can hurt, but names can't hurt you. This is a ca-

[95:02]

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