Wow, first of all, may I say how nice it is to see everybody. How many of you are just new today
Good. A lot of people knew and a lot of people coming back. Thank you.
My name is Misha Ka'oon and I have been leading a different group that is associated with San Francisco Zen Center
For about 33 years and literally just the weekend before last had a big ceremony of stepping down from that role
And so this is a big transition time for me because at the same time
I was invited to become a teacher here last November
So the last since November, there's been a lot of overlap and I'm actually glad that this is my big responsibility now, just to be here
The people in my group
decided that they were not going to seek another teacher right away. There's many people in the group who've been practicing with me for over 30 years
And so they decided to follow a model that's out there of having peer leadership
So there's about 5 people who are sharing the leadership at this time
Eventually, I think they may look around for a teacher, but having a teacher is a very personal thing
Years ago, my second teacher, Blanche Hartman at San Francisco's Zen Center, was getting very old, and it was a long trip for me back and forth, and she said, oh, why don't you try this teacher who's… he's a Vipassana teacher, but he also has Zen training, he's down in the Bay Area
You know, down here and and you
I said, okay
And he is a wonderful teacher, and he has many students
And we really like each other
But something just wasn't there. And when I went back to my teacher, Blanche, I explained this and she's
Affinity
A Zoom teacher
You have to have a feeling of affinity. There has to be something there
about that person
that you because the Dharma itself is pure, and you can't do anything about that, but the vessel
May have some big cracks, and you have to decide if you're willing to put up with those particular cracks
Anyway, many of my students were not thrilled about me stepping down, although they understood why it was time
I'm getting old, I'm getting ready to move a little bit away from this area, not too far
I have glaucoma, which means that driving at night is very hard for me
And we were meeting every Monday evening and alternate Saturdays
So it was time
And it also feels very appropriate for me to be here. I just live 20 minutes down the road
But because they were expressing so much concern at one point, I shared a wonderful story, a Zen story. There's a master who's dying
And all his monks are weeping and wailing
And finally, he says, well, why? I don't understand. Why are you all crying
Well, because you're leaving us, Master.
He says leaving?
Where is it you think I could go
This is really very profound
How many of you have lost
Someone very important to you. Parent, an aunt, grandmother, a child.
Pretty much everyone. It happens.
It's what happens
We have a body. The Buddha understood this intimately
That the real suffering is not about the body. We're going to suffer because we have a body. But
He concentrated on the other kind of suffering that we do to ourselves.
But
When we really finally understand this practice and our life
What we understand is that
Nobody ever actually leaves.
Because we are all part
of each other
And this is not some philosophical airy fairy thing that I'm saying
It's actually completely, honestly
The truth of the matter
When you leave today
Some part of me
has become a part of you
Just because you're here listening to what I have to say
And when I talked to some of you afterwards, some part of you is going to become me
We are all a complete composite
Of every person we have ever known and every situation we have ever been in
Each thing has brought us to this moment right here, right now
And so I have long conversations with my father, who died 20 years ago
This is because I was very close to him
They died at 73, and I am almost 73 now
It was, from many point people's point of view, it was too young, but
Within the same month
A little girl in my school died at the age of 15
So from my point of view, 73 was a reasonable amount of time
But when I talked to him
I always, I hear his voice and I hear his wisdom. And because we knew each other so well, I know
what he's going to say to me
Because he's not out there
He's not ashes
is right here inside of me
So at the end of his life, the Buddha said
Be a light
unto yourself
These are not fanciful words
And they are not to be taken lightly
We cannot rely
On a teacher
For our understanding of our life
We can't rely on books, however wonderful they might be
I've certainly been impressed with many of the books that I have read
And even fiction often contains incredible, wonderful knowledge and insight.
We can also not depend on anyone's reputation as a teacher
Or
A business partner or as the CEO of our company
In the long run
We have to rely on ourselves
We have to shine that light inward
So in one of the famous sutras written by Zen Master Dogan
who lived from 1200 to 1250.
It's the Fan Zazangi, he says
Therefore
Put aside the intellectual practice of investigating words and chasing phrases
And learn to take
backwards
Which turns the light
And shines it inward
Now, in the beginning of our practice
Of course we rely on a teacher
We come to a Zen Center. We assume that there's going to be some kind of information and instruction
And this is normal. This is what we do when we want to find out about something, we want to learn how to paint watercolors. We have someone who knows how to do it show us how it's done.
And maybe we practice with that person for many, many years
Which is what I did in college
What a wonderful watercolor teacher, and I was an art student and
Year after year after year, quarter after quarter, I took his class until finally came the day
When I went off in my own direction
But I have been given a good foundation
I knew how to do it
And then I had to rely on that light shining inward to figure out what to do next.
So there's a very famous teacher whose name is Okamura-sensei
And he became the student of an even more famous teacher, Uchiyama Roshi
And when Okamuro was going to become a student of Uchiyama Roshi
He was in Japan at the time
Okamura's father went to Uchiyama Rochi because he was also a Zen teacher, and he said to him
Please take good care of my son
Later, when Uchiyama was meeting with Okamura
They said to him, you know, this is what your father said to me
But I cannot do it
My
is to follow the path of the Buddha
If you wish
You can walk that way with me
But I cannot take care of you
This
is a grown-up practice.
The teachers are not your mom, or your dad, or even your aunt and uncle
They are hopefully
Examples of the way
But you're the one
It has to do the practice.
You're the one that has to sit down on that cushion and over and over again
Find that your body is uncomfortable
That your legs are getting all whacked out
Bet your back is beginning to hurt.
That your mind is going in a million directions.
And to keep coming back when you realize that it's gone off
Come back to here
So
There's a famous Tibetan teacher, Aspha Gosa
And he wrote something called the Buddha Karitha, which means the ax
of the Buddha
Which is exactly about what I'm saying
It says do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it
Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
But
After observation and analysis
When you find that anything agrees with reason
And is conducive to the good and benefit
of one and all
then accept it
And live up to it
This was
Why I ended up staying with Zen practice
When I first
Went to practice
In 1984, which is long before many of you were even born, I'm pretty sure
I went because my life felt
A little empty
I had gotten to a place where I had everything that I was told I was supposed to be getting.
I had wonderful employment, had a great husband, had a dog
Had a nice place to live
I had made it
I was in my late 20s
And there was a part of me that's
Is that all there is?
Did I miss something? I mean, I've checked all the boxes
And I'm still not feeling complete
I had been raised as a Catholic
And I think one of the things that I missed
Or the forms
You know, there was an expectation every Sunday you went to church, right?
And you genuflected, and you said some words, and you had some community
And then when I was 18, I said, that's it. I'm done with you.
I don't… I can't really get behind a lot of the things that you're saying, especially about women
And so then I didn't do anything.
Except read
I've always been a big reader
So I read everything I could get my hands on
philosophy, religion
Did a lot of drugs, I have to confess also
And as they say, that was a door to perception
But I also realized you can't do that for the rest of your life
But I thought, you know what, if drugs can do that in my brain, then my brain can do it by itself
But how
As I was reading, it didn't matter, it didn't have to be a Buddhist book, it was something else. It would say, well, you know, and the Zen masters of old would say blah, blah, blah
And after that happened about 6 times, I'm a slow learner
I said, who the hell are these guys?
I had never heard of Zen. I had never heard of Buddhism. I had a sheltered childhood
So I got me a book
A book that I'm not supposed to pay any attention to, by the way
It turned out it was, quote, the wrong book
It was called Zen and Japanese Culture
And it was written in 195
I'm reading it at this point
And in this book, everything I'm reading, I'm going, yeah.
Yeah
Oh, it was as if everything I had sort of come to on my own was all finally in one place.
Except there was one problem. In the book, it basically said if you wanted to study Zen, you had to go to Japan
Well, that wasn't going to happen right away because I had a job
And
I didn't think that my husband was interested in going to Japan
So I started sitting meditation on my own
And that was nice as far as it went.
And then it just, you know, there are serendipitous events that happen in our life, but we have to be ready for
It's that old, you know, when the student is ready, the master appears. Well, that was my case.
We had a roommate for a while
She loved to cook
And she understood that I had this affinity for all things Japanese. And it was true
So she found out there was a UC Extension course up in the city called
Seasons and cooking in Japanese Culture
She figured that covered all the bases for us.
So we went
And I just happened to sit next to someone who had just come back from Japan.
Now, meanwhile, I have started a series of paintings called
Zen Mind Beginner's mind
I didn't know there was a book called that
It was a phrase that was in this book
Written in 195
So I was trying to express my understanding in my abstract paintings at that point
Anyway, this woman and I start talking during the lunch period
And, she says she just got back from Japan. I was like, oh, I've always wanted to go, and, you know.
Studies end there, and, you know, I've started this new series called Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, and she looks at me quite innocently, and she says, oh, do you practice
It's like, I figured she wasn't talking about piano
It's like, no
Why, do you
Oh, yeah, I go to this place down in Mountain View
Mountain View, I say
So this was a Saturday, the very next Wednesday, I find myself at the Zen Center in Mountain View
The rest, as I say, is history.
Because the moment I walked in, it was actually an experience I have no idea why I had it
I had never seen a Zendo. I'd seen a Japanese house at the Huntington Gardens with the beautiful tatami and you can see from one end to the other. And that was the beginning of the little seven-year-old girl thinking, I like this stuff
But I have never seen a Zendo
And when the person who was giving Zazin instruction opened the sliding door to the Zendo, and I looked in
I had the most bizarre feeling of complete
Recognition
And familiarity.
It's like I have been waiting for this place my whole life, and not even knowing it
But I hadn't read Ozbagosa at that point
And I had, I think, this mistaken idea of the teacher as guru
Take that out of your head right now
That is not our practice.
I have been practicing for 40 years, 41 now, 42, something like that.
It doesn't mean anything.
Because my understanding can't be your understanding.
Any of the teachers here
What we are doing is we're pointing a finger at the moon. The moon is it. The moon is the Dharma that you yourself have to get there. We can point a finger
As Uchiyama said, if you wish you can walk that way with me
But I cannot take care of you
Even if I could find a way to say all the magic words that would open your mind
It's still my experience, not yours
And that's why we have what is called a practice
And it is like piano in that sense. If you've got to do it a whole lot to get anywhere at all
But we're always talking about not getting anywhere
But the way I think of it, Suzuki Roshi once said something very wise
He said Zen practice is sort of like going out
the fog that we had this morning, going out in a fine mist
For a long time
Eventually
You are wet through
You're not trying to be wet through
It happens
And when we talk about great doubt and great faith in Zen practice, the faith is
That it will happen
It will happen with or without you as long as you do the work.
So Asbagosa says you shouldn't believe anything simply because you have heard it
Or even heard it in your own mind, by the way
There's a wonderful, I used to sit in at Vajrapani down off of Route 9, and they had a bumper sticker
That says, don't believe everything you think
How many times have thoughts come into your head
And you find yourself believing them until you one day say, wait a minute
Whose voice is that?
There came a day, for instance, when I said to myself
not being happy with the way something had been done. Just like my mother used to say, if you want a job done right, you've got to do it yourself.
And then my Zen voice came up and said
Well, yeah, I suppose, but if you do it always yourself
Then no one else has a chance to learn how to do it, and you're going to be doing it alone
Oh
This was a tape
It took me a very long time to realize it was my mother's voice in my head
But for me, it wasn't true
So whenever anything arises in your mind, you should not only say, okay, I'm not going to believe everything I read or hear, but also, maybe in my own mind, I shouldn't believe everything
that arises
This is actually one of the beauties of meditation is to keep saying
Really
Are you sure
Think about this again
He also says you shouldn't believe anything simply because you read it somewhere.
Many of us in the early days read a wonderful book, and maybe you have too
Called the three pillars of Zen.
It's a great book
Unfortunately, it's all about enlightenment experiences
And so it ends up happening is you're like, okay, I want that
And then you come and it's all this hard work on the cushion, boring, boring, boring. What's going on? Where's my enlightenment experience?
It doesn't happen that way, I can tell you that from experience.
It
Does not happen to be the case
That you should listen to any one particular teacher
So many years ago, after my teacher Blanche died
I was looking around for another teacher
And there was a man at San Francisco Zen Center who I knew somewhat
I knew his wife also, she was also a teacher there
And
I had been watching him for years. It's the best way you just watch someone, you observe what they do
So I wrote him and I said, may I come and talk to you? Here's my situation.
I don't have a teacher. I am a teacher for other people and I feel like teachers should always have teachers.
You know, because
Teachers can get to be ambitious or arrogant, or think they know something. And their teacher then knocks them down a few pegs
So I went to visit him and we're having this great conversation. And then finally he says.
Have you, listened to any of my lectures
I think he thought he was asking me a trick question
I looked at it and I said, nope
Never listened to any of your lectures.
He was a little taken aback by that
And I said, you want to know why?
Yeah
Lots of people can give a good talk
I give good talks
I have been told that
It doesn't mean the damn thing. It just means I know how to give good talks and I've been giving talks practically my entire life
I come from a long line of storytellers. It is why I became a librarian.
That's all about telling stories
And you get good at it
But it doesn't mean you should listen to anything I'm saying.
And with that, this teacher started laughing. It's like, got it.
And we ended up having wonderful conversations because he understood
I didn't care what he said in a lecture. What I cared about, I told him, I said, I have been watching you for years at Zen Center
How you get up
How you sit down, how you relate to the people
What you do in a ceremony, what you do in regular situations like this
I have been watching from afar
You're the real deal
Not everybody is.
So observe
Watch
have affinity
And also he says
Don't believe anything just because it's a tradition. That's been handed down for centuries. You know, there are very famous stories of, you know, burning the Buddha
I love the traditions in Zen practice. I love offering incense and bowing, all of those things make sense to me.
But
They are not it. What those things are for are to bring you back
to a state of attention
And when we're bowing
You know, I'm offering each one of those vows for a specific person
or a group of people
It starts with the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha, and then it's my
Dead teachers, my living teachers
My dead family members
Then it's my current family
My husband's family and then it is for all my sangha and everyone who has asked me for help recently
That's all nine boughs
But as far as then he ends it so wonderfully. He says, but after observation and analysis
In other words, critical thinking
Which is
not being used much these days in our country.
When you find that anything agrees with reason and
And is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all
Then
accept it and live up to it
What a wonderful thing to live up to
Something that is reasonable, that your heart as well as your head
That you have looked and you have watched and you have analyzed it, you have thought about it, you have questioned it
When it is for the good of all
That
You must do
You must accept
And do that practice
And another very famous sutra by Dogan as well, the Genjo Koan, he says, this is his most famous thing
To study the way
is to study the self
To study the self
To forget the self.
To forget the self is to be actualized by the myriad things
When you first seek dharma
You imagine you are far away from its environs
But Dharma is already transmitted. You are immediately right now
Your original self
And why this Dogan recommends studying the self as opposed to studying books or even his own writings
Because here's the best part about meditation
You are the scientist
Studying
And you are also the science experiment
You are both in one
Nobody knows you like you do
This is why you will get frustrated when you go into your doctor or your car mechanic and you're trying to explain what's wrong. You know there's something wrong
Because you know better than they do.
But trying to get them to understand what's wrong
That's the work
Each of you
is a child of the Buddha
or God, or the cloud of unknowing
Or a child of the universe, whatever you want to call it, it doesn't really matter to me.
You belong here
You have a right to be here
And you are not alone. You are connected with every single thing
You were born
impurity
And you will die that way
And when you are upset with people or there are people that you don't like or you don't wish
loving kindness too
What you need to remember is
That person was also born
impurity
The difficulty for us are causes and conditions that bring us
to now
So there are people out there causing a great deal of difficulty
They do not care about other people. They are not concerned about being for the benefit of one and all. But this is due to causes and conditions. And when you are wishing loving kindness, please wish loving kindness to those individuals too
I know it's hard. It's hard for me
But frankly, those are the people that need it
Most
So I want to read one last thing
About your connection and your purity and where you came from and where you're going.
This is the book of Suzuki Roshi, the very first one, Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, which is a collection of his early lectures
There have been a couple books since, but as you can see, the pages on this one are bent and worn, and all kinds of… I've had it for a long time
I went to Yosemite National Park
And I saw some huge waterfalls
The highest one there
Is 1,340 feet high
And from it, the water comes down like a curtain thrown from the top of the mountain
It does not seem to come down swiftly
As you might expect
It seems to come down very slowly because of the distance
And the water does not come down as one stream
But is separated into many tiny streams
From a distance, it looks like a curtain
And I thought it must be a very difficult experience.
For each drop of water
to come down from the top
Such a high mountain
It takes time, you know
A long time
For the water finally to reach the bottom
of the waterfall
And it seems to me
That our human life
May be like this
We have many difficult experiences in our life
But at the same time, I thought the water
Was not originally separated
It was one whole river
Only when it is separated
Does it have some difficulty in falling
It is as if the water does not have any feeling when it is one whole river
Only when separated into many drops
Can it begin to have or to express
some feeling
When we see one whole river
We do not feel the living activity of the water
But when we dip a part of the water into a dipper
We experience some feeling of the water
And we also feel the value of the person who uses the water
Feeling ourselves and the water in this way, we cannot use it in just a material way. It is a living thing
Before we were born
We had no feeling
We were one
with the universe
This is called mind only
or essence of mind or
Big mind
After we are separated by birth from this oneness, as the water falling from the waterfall is separated by the wind and the rocks
Then we have feeling
And you have difficulty
Because you have
Feeling
You attach to the feeling you have without knowing just how this kind of feeling is created
When you do not realize that you are one with the river
or one with the universe
You have fear
Whether it is separated into drops or not
Water is
Water
Our life and death
Are the same thing
When we realize this fact
We have no fear of death anymore
And we have no actual difficulty
In our life
This is what it means at the end of another sutra, the Jijuyuzamay
This being so
The zazen of even one person
That one moment
Imperceptibly accord
With all things
And fully resonates throughout time
Thus, in the past, the future and the present of the limitless universe, this Zazen
Carries on the Buddhist teaching
endlessly
Each moment of Zazan
is equally wholeness of practice
Equally, wholeness realization
You were waiting for enlightenment
This is it.
Sitting down on your cushion
Is taking
Your enlightened mind into practice.
You have everything you need
Or as the famous writer Leo Tolstoy once said.
the kingdom of God
is within
Be a light
unto yourself
Do your practice
Marvelous things are going to happen
Thank you.
It's 11:20.
I usually talk too long, that's why I'm laughing.
So we have a few minutes
Or not
minutes doubled. This has never happened
So if you have a question, a comment, something you'd like to add, some experience you've had, I would love to hear it
Please don't be shy. And if it's nothing about what I said, that's fine too. You can ask any question you want.
Yes.
So the Han that you all heard out there, the wooden
That
phrase is always written on the Han. Life is swiftly passing. Do not waste your days in vain
For that very reason.
You all want to do something good in the world
For most of us, we're very small people
We're not politicians
We're not usually heads of, you
Google and Facebook and
And you think to yourself, oh, there's nothing I can do
Yes, you can.
This is it
Because whatever you think is happening for you
You're going to take it back out into the world and you don't even have to be aware of how you're taking it out into the world
Something happens here
And you go out into the world
And you make a difference that way.
Maybe
You treat the grocery store clerk nicer than you would have
Maybe when you get on the road, instead of cursing the person who's passing you at 90 miles an hour, you via con dios
Don't
Waste your time
There are so many things that we can be distracted by.
And they're fun things, right? Movies and books. I mean, I love reading. I told you that
But this
This is what actually is going
To create a miracle inside of you.
Thank you.
Yeah
And some of these, they don't have any solution
Don't have any
But what will you do
try to not think about the
So for those of you who are on Lane, I'll just summarize
is asking about when you're in meditation how not to be concentrating on whatever your problem is at the moment
But perhaps shifting it into a more positive expression in your zazen. And what do I do with that?
First of all, I try not to shift it into positive, okay? Try to keep in neutral.
One of the main things
you know, even after all these years of practice. When you have a great difficulty in your life
That is what's going to be arising for you
And what I have
found for myself to be true, and what I have to then remind myself
If I would just sit
And empty my mind
Of anything
of the problem, whether it has a solution or not.
of
Oh, maybe I could do this more positive.
Now, just following my breath
What happens is
The mind begins to calm down
and stops thinking altogether, hopefully
There's an old joke about a story of the Zen teacher and his student, and he's pouring tea into the student's cup and the student's going on and on about this and this and this, and finally he looks and says, Master, the teacup is overflowing
And the master says, well, yes, that's because you cannot feel. You can't feel an already full teacup
We are all filled teacups
And so until we empty our teacup out
There's no space for anything else to arise
The interesting thing to me
Is that
Afterwards
Often something will present itself
But I never thought of
Because guess what? We are Paul, part of a collective unconsciousness
When we get rid of our small self, our ego self, and make space
Something else has the opportunity to arise
Second thing I would say
I used to spend a lot of time worrying
You know, planning, oh, if I could just, you know, if I just then when I get to that place, then I'll be all ready for it. Getting my ducks in an order, right?
By the time you get to that place, it has changed
And so have you
I have found it is a complete waste of time
You're worrying about something that hasn't happened, and that when you get there, it's completely different than the way you imagined it was going to be. And so all that time you spent in Zazen thinking
You could have been emptying out your teacup
So that's what I do.
The main thing I think is
I've offered this as an example before. There was a wonderful teacher who came to give a lecture one time, and he held up his stick, and he had a pretty heavy Japanese accent.
I think
thinking, not this
So I was in this
Because a lot of times we don't even realize we're thinking, do we?
You know, we're halfway down and we're going down the rabbit hole, and then all of a sudden, it's so wonderful. It's like we have two brains.
There's this little brain that says hello, where are you?
He said, "This
Instead of saying, oh, well, I really want to nudge this a little bit more and think about it a little bit longer, no, no, no, tell yourself no. Come back to here, come back to the breath
And then you're going to go back to this way
And you may do that 60 times or 600 times in a 40-minute period
What you're doing is you're developing a muscle
The muscle to let go
of this juicy thing, whatever it is, it's got your attention and bring it back
Just to your breath.
Thank you. Great question.
We've got time for at least another one
And for all. Conducive for all.
So in today's world
How do I
So the question has to do with
Trying to do good in the world
Something that is conducive to the benefit of all beings
How do we do that? How do we know if we're doing that
How do we know that the good we think we're doing
is good across the board
And
How to think about that, how to look at that
Great.
Very complex
The founder of this temple
Vinci know Roshi
They once said something I'm going to have to paraphrase it. He said, you
When a person realizes
That everything they do
Don't do
Say
Don't say, affects everything else
It makes a person want to sit down
That is probably the most important reason that we sit, Zazen
You started out by saying in this world
And then you said, well, in any world, but it is the case
That our world is so much more complicated
than the Buddhist was
It doesn't mean that human emotions and suffering has changed
But it's happening at a very rapid pace
And it is a much more
complicated and global world
The Buddha lived in India
They didn't travel anywhere else. He traveled all throughout India
But there were other civilizations happening that he didn't know anything about.
These days, you know everything that's happening in the world all the time.
And we, you know, the Eightfold Path includes things like right action, right speech, and right livelihood
You might think
Even as a Zen teacher
that I'm doing right livelihood
But I do know that there are religious teachers in the world
We end up doing very bad things.
Maybe they
are not speaking the truth, and maybe behind the scenes they're doing things they shouldn't be doing
So
The main reason
That we
sit in Zazam
is what Dogan says
To study the way is to study the self
And I wish he had added in the words for a very long time
You're going to be if you if you do this practice, you are going to be studying the self
the rest of your life
Because the self all by itself is very complicated
You have all got habitual behavioral patterns. I do too
And I
I know a lot of them and I work with them
But when I first started practice, I didn't understand three quarters, you know, seven eighths of who I really was
When you don't know who you are
You cause harm
Because you go out in the world in this completely unaware way, you don't even realize you're causing harm
So an example of what you're asking
Just for all of us to get here today
Most of us had to drive
We're using fuel.
We're killing bugs.
You might not think that's very important, but the bug liked its life, right?
You're using the rubber on your tires
You've got an ecological footprint just to come and do meditation
Which is a good thing to be here
So
The early Greeks borrowed things from the Buddhists, by the way
The two most famous things they borrowed was
You know thyself
To study the way is to study the self. He got that from the Buddha
Because the Greeks conquered Gandharan India
years after the Buddha died
And his teachings were still alive and well. And they said, oh, that sounds like a good one. Take that back
And the second one they did was
Pause no harm.
This is fundamental Buddhism
There is no way that you can cause no harm
Just know that
No matter how good a person you are, no matter what the best intentions you have
You will cause harm
And so the best you can probably hope for is
Cause the least amount of harm
That is how I work with that
I have a bit of a temper
Most people don't know this about me because I work on it all the time.
My husband knows it.
This is if you want to know the true nature of anybody, talk to the person who has to live with them
But I know it about myself
And I know it causes harm, so I work on it all the time
It's not easy. By causes and conditions brought me to this place. I have two parents who had tempers
And they weren't aware of them particularly.
So the good news is, at least
This generation now
I'm aware of it.
So depending on what your work is
Be of good cheer
Find a
Where you can do mostly good
But no
That it may be used for things
That weren't exactly in, you know, your wish
Just by paying taxes, folks, which you have to do by law
You are supporting
Things that maybe politically, you don't want to support.
You could do what Akin Roshi did and stop paying taxes
Long time ago
For some reason they never did put him in jail
But I think if we all said, oh, we're not going to pay our taxes because we don't like people would be coming to our door.
So
Know thyself
to the best of your ability
in order to cause the least amount of harm
I think we have to stop
Thank you.