But I'm dedicating this talk to Marika, who died three years ago
I worked with her for almost 19 years and her commitment to me and love had a big impact on my life.
As Nenzen said, her last teacher was Charlotte Joco Beck. I've worked with her teachings for years and find them
The most helpful teachings that I've worked with
In fact, my private Dharma name is
And C is cocai
which this is the private one that's Doug and Joko, and then this is trusting in the Dow
Because the Dao Deijing was also
Important to me
In her last book
ordinary wonder
She says, working with pain is the heart of practice.
In this talk, I want to focus on how I've worked with pain in my practice. But first st I want to describe why she would say that
And why Marika would agree.
Marika, as a child, survived sexual abuse, the Holocaust and World War II
As a teenager, she was involved in the Hungarian Revolution and fled to France to avoid arrest and persecution
In her 20s, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma. And at the time there was no cure. However, Stanford had started an experimental treatment and she was able to participate that through in that, and that saved her life.
She was not just a survivor. She who had faced death and repression.
She was a positive person who was full of energy and loved life and people
She had worked through her traumas
She was a very direct person. She had experienced firsthand the denial and self-deception and unwillingness to face our suffering.
She wanted me to understand and acknowledge all parts of myself
After all, what is unconditional love, but accepting things without condition
She wanted me to develop an empathetic understanding of other people as well, which is the Enneagram, but I'm not going into that today, but
And to do that, basically, I need to understand the cause of suffering.
One of the books she recommended was The Denial of Death
by Ernst Becker. And I'm going to read a longer passage of it, partly because I feel like it really vividly describes, like, the human condition as a child
So this is from the book. To understand the weight of dualism of the human condition. We have to know that the child can't really handle either end of it.
The most characteristic thing about him is that he is precocious or premature
He has right from the beginning an exquisite sensory system that rapidly develops to take in all the sensations of the world with an extreme finesse.
Add to it the quick development of language and the sense of self and pile it all upon a helpless infant body trying vainly to grab the world correctly and safely.
The result is ludicrous. The child is overwhelmed by experiences of the dualism of self and the body from both areas, since he can be a master of neither.
He is not a confident social self. Adept manipulator of symbolic categories of words, thoughts, names or places, or especially of time.
Children feel hounded by symbols they don't understand the need of. Verbal demands that seem petty. And rules and codes that call them away from their pleasure in the straightforward expression of their natural energies.
And when they try to master the body, pretend it isn't there
The body suddenly overwhelms them, and the child breaks down in desperate tears over his natural… over his melted pretense at being a purely symbolic animal
Characters, the face that one sets to the world, but it hides an inner defeat.
The child emerges with a name, a family, a play world, and a neighborhood, all clearly cut out for her.
But her insides are full of nightmarish memories of impossible battles, terrifying anxieties of blood, pain, aloneness, darkness
mixed with limitless desires, sensations of unspeakable beauty, majesty, awe, mystery, and fantasies and hallucinations of mixtures between the two
The impossible attempt to compromise between bodies and symbols
to grow up at all is to conceal the mass of internal scar tissue that throbs in our dreams
Mariko is not a Zen teacher. She called herself
A psycho-spiritual guide that is a mix of psychotherapy and spirituality.
She had practiced Zen since the 70s, starting with Korean Zen in New York City.
As I mentioned, Joko was her last teacher.
And Mariaka said that Joko was the most evolved person she had ever met because she was able to hold the trauma that Maraka had experienced.
In the most matter-of-fact way.
Before she died, she talked about writing a third book about what had become a critical aspect of her teaching, the core belief and basic strategy.
These are the beliefs and strategies that come out of the situation that Becker so vividly described.
After her death, her daughter compiled this book from Joco's talks
And I wanted to read a couple of excerpts from that to give you a sense of
what the core belief and
Basic strategies are
It is in figuring out how to respond to something out of our control that we form a negative belief about ourselves.
We all have a core belief. You may not know it yet if you haven't thought about your life in this way, but it's there.
It will come up particularly in times of crisis.
Our work is to know and experience the core belief so that we can understand the ways that we sabotage ourselves.
Our core belief for most of us comes down to some version of I feel worthless.
That can look like I'm not enough, I'm hopeless, I can't do anything, I'm not lovable.
There are a lot of variations.
This belief is like the hub of a wheel. Out of it comes the spokes, systems and strategies we use so we don't have to feel the pain of our false core belief.
Your core belief, this fundamental perception of who you think you are informs your way of dealing with your life.
It's what I call your basic strategy
Our strategies are all the ways that we do our lives, particularly when we are troubled, so that we don't have to feel the pain of our core belief.
We do all sorts of things and they may look very different from one person to another.
One person has to be busy all the time or talking all the time. Another person is always so quiet that you don't know they're there.
Some people will tell you off in a minute. Some will never say anything that would hurt your feeling. Strategies. Unless you know learn to know and explore your own strategy. It's automatic. It just runs.
the thing that brings people to practice is when they begin to see that their strategy doesn't work.
And so you can see why she said learning to be with pain is the heart of practice.
So it's my core belief. I think I feel like I'm unlovable as I am. And I feel like the exact wording isn't so important. It's more important to get in touch with it.
And when I do, there's a lot of energy around it. I've been working with somebody sort of a more somatic. And it's like I can feel like this desire to be more in my head. I notice sometimes I want to be confused, feel helpless
fixate on something. But it's like like just there's this stuff. Well, and it's also interesting that the piece, if you sense something, that's actually also kind of hard to stay with
Anyway.
My strategies and defense mechanisms are easier to identify with and name than the belief.
For example, if somebody like your friend says something you strongly disagree with. You can immediately notice
You're probably going to have a typical way of dealing with it, like
pushing back or deferring to them or trying to find a compromise
And as I'm talking, you may find yourself reacting. All of these are ways that your your strategies are trying to manage. And
And I think my basic strategy is trying to please by doing what I'm told and being agreeable
As Becker pointed out, though, these two parts of me
the body can also can be thwarting my goal to please.
And so the rest of the talk, I'll talk about my examples of my strategy and how I've worked with them
In my 20s, I developed anxiety disorder. The experience illustrates my basic strategy. I did well in high school and grade school. I knew what was expected of me. I was able to do what I was told. I liked learning
And doing homework, the teachers liked me.
I attended McAllister, a small liberal arts college in St. Paul. In the two years there, I earned all A's but one where I had an A minus. My basic strategy was working.
But it wasn't completely protecting my me. During exam weeks
I really didn't study much. It was just too overwhelming to try to bring everything together.
But fortunately, I did all right because I made sure I had a good night's sleep and went in, rested and relaxed and all my preparation had helped.
After my sophomore year, I transferred to the electrical engineering department at the University of Minnesota.
My strategy stopped working, partly because I wasn't working hard enough. The classes were tough. I was living off campus.
I was responsible for my own meals, and I had to commute
I was also trying to have a life outside of school
And it became stressful.
The next year I start an internship at the power company. My boss, Kellyan Mustafi, was a good-natured person.
He laughed easily and told me about his desire to return to India someday. He was sending his daughter to classes about after school to learn Hindi and Hindu culture. In fact, he and his wife are still running a dance theater in Minnesota
Next year, I started to intern. Oh, I said that.
I wasn't given any responsibility that could affect the power grid. But I started to get anxious. One of my tasks they'd have they'd monitor the lines, and they'd have these huge scrolls that would be like measuring when something went wrong, and I was supposed to go through these
And figure out which one of them was important.
And so then and I saved that one and put them in a drawer
And Callion would say, Ross, do you have like October 3rd at 2 PM? And I'd go and sure enough, it was gone, you know, I hadn't saved that one
So anyway.
This example shows how objectively what there wasn't a problem. My job there was basically to get trained and to get some exposure to engineering.
But I was trying to do everything right to please Calian
And he was… he always responded with patience and kindness, so it wasn't… it was something about me
And also my core belief made me more anxious because I would start to get anxious and it was proof to me that was something wrong with me. I wanted to get rid of it.
Naturally, the opposite happened. The more
I got more anxious, and I started to like I bicycled to NSP and I see the building and start to get anxious. And then when I left, the anxiety disappeared.
But soon it was
It was just sort of like this general anxiety
For many people, their faith support them. Mine was a mixed blessing. I was active in the Episcopal Church, a form of Christianity.
I had a daily quiet time where I would pray and read the Bible or other material and write in my journal.
The activities were a support, but they would also reinforce my core belief because I thought I should embody these ideals.
The heart of the Episcopal worship service is the confession and the communion. In the confession, we confess our sins and repent. Which means turning towards God
The priest forgives us and we begin the communion where, quote, We are reminded that we are one body united
to God and one another
The church does not look at this from the perspective of a core belief
And basic strategy. But you can see how this addresses them. We feel separate from God. We believe the reason is there's something wrong with us. We want to be good, but we behave in ways that are not loving.
The church says, if you repent, your sins are taken away, you're lovable.
That made sense to me. But I thought that this would feel a certain way.
I would feel good about myself, but I didn't feel that.
And at the end of the service, the priest blesses us saying, May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, be among us and remain with us always.
I wanted that piece, but instead I felt anxious. Once again, there was something wrong with me. I heard the message of grace. But I couldn't take it in.
Rather than question my coping strategies and my beliefs driving them, I applied them to my faith. I worked harder to please God.
At one point in my 20s, I read how Ben Franklin worked on 13 virtues in a rotation of one per week.
I like the idea, so I chose seven virtues
A concordant lists all the citations of the Bible for each word
I used I basically I put them all on these little note cards and I'd work with one each day.
One of the virtues I wanted was love. I quickly realized that
My love was more transactional than genuine. From Joco's perspective, this is exactly what I should expect to see
But I had not read Joco. I felt worse about myself.
Another virtue is honesty. I realized that I didn't outright lie.
But often I wouldn't say what I really felt. That isn't always a problem, but hiding is a hindrance to healthy relationships and doesn't feel good. It also reinforces the core belief.
If I can't reveal to others what I think
Then I'm basically reinforcing this idea that there's something wrong.
And so it was discouraging.
I was trying to cultivate virtues, I was trying to be honest
But I was feeling worse. Some of the reading helped. In Paul's letter to the Romans, he says that we cannot be justified by actions. In other words, our basic strategy will not take away the pain of the core belief.
Paul says that we're justified by faith when we are forgiven, we feel loved and naturally act in a loving way.
That made sense to me.
I understood that I couldn't make myself holy.
A part of me also pushed against my basic strategy in ways that felt counterproductive
I would push against myself to be a better person but then stop. Something in me knew that there wasn't anything wrong with me, but I was
I wasn't able to skillfully work with that.
Besides my work and faith, the core belief obviously affected my relationships. I don't have time to go into it, but it was a major focus of my practice and work with Marika.
One important relationship with Lois Malcolm. We met at the university and married in 1985 and later divorced.
She had a big impact on my life.
She is very passionate and articulate about her faith. She is able to explain and contextualize Christianity in ways that made sense to me. She now teaches theology at Luther Semony and
Seminary in St. Paul and her students love her.
In the 90s, I was learning to meditate without knowing it. I would frequently wake up at night and have trouble getting back to sleep.
I decided to work on it in a positive way. When I woke up, I paid attention to the experience. Worry didn't help.
I appreciated that it was peaceful in the middle of the night
There were no expectations. I became curious about consciousness and the act of falling asleep.
I would listen to the wind and the trees. It was relaxing, even if it wasn't as restful as sleep.
In the summer of 2002, I became an interested in meditation. I was in therapy at the beginning of my session. I would recite the first chapter of the Daode Jing.
Then we would have a short period of meditation before therapy.
I like meditation and wanted to learn more
My niece Libby and I went to Spirit Rock Meditation Center one Saturday. The speaker was Adya Shanti, or Adya for short.
Like this program, they had segments of a meditation talk and a discussion period.
He had some exposure to Zen and taught a similar approach to meditation.
That proved far more useful to me than what I was doing. My electrical engineering background was helpful in meditation. I knew how to think through a problem and knew when to stop when I had exhausted my options.
Also, Anya helped me to understand that I could ignore certain thoughts. That was sort of a new thing like, okay, you're a little just
Alright.
I didn't have to resolve things that had no solutions.
Basic strategies can have genuine benefits. I had a successful career, and it helped in my meditation.
I basically said he said, just sit. So I sat, and he said, there's nothing to get. And so I believed which was helpful.
Although meditation helped, emotions were harder to work with. I saw how emotions and thoughts can reinforce each other, but I didn't want to let go of my emotions.
I felt like I was giving up on my desires. and I wanted to do it.
In an honest way.
Audio is not a Spirit Rock teacher, meaning he wasn't like a Theravada Buddhist.
He was teaching in his own non-dual approach.
citing Hindus, Buddhists, Sufis, Christian mystics, and others
He was a gifted speaker. I liked him and continued to attend his programs for a couple of years.
Lois attended them as well.
She liked his fresh perspective
She even would take some of his talks and work with them in order to help her own thinking, and then we would talk about it.
Which I enjoyed.
I found the question and answer periods very helpful. They lasted about 40 minutes. So people would have a longer discussion with him and go in depth about their life and practice.
Their vulnerability helped me to acknowledge similar struggles I had and to realize that I wasn't alone.
His response has gave me a different perspective. He took things more lightly than I
After the events, I would talk to people. One woman would always encourage me to attend a retreat.
I was surprised anyone would spend their vacation time on a retreat, but I decided to try it.
I found it very helpful and have attended at least two every year since.
In 2004, as Anzen mentioned, I went to Cannondo
I liked it. Zen felt familiar to a worship service with priests in robes, chanting incense, bells and bowing.
The confusion about when to stand and when to bow and when to join in the chant felt familiar. They even used multiple languages instead of Greek, Hebrew, and English, there was Pali, Japanese, and English.
The teachings also felt familiar, especially after my introduction from Adya and Lois.
Instead of the Holy Ghost, there was the Buddha nature instead of a conversion experience, there was awakening.
The core of Christianity that I had pursued to feel forgiven also seemed to be here instead of forgiveness, Dogan said that when you sit, you're enlightened.
The abbot last would say there's nothing to attain. That's exactly what St. Paul and Martin Luther were saying. You can't earn grace.
Unfortunately, when I entered the Zendo, I didn't bring my beginner's mind. I listened to the Dharma talks the same way Lois and I listened to sermons with a critical ear, ready to dissect it.
Does this make sense from my experience? How well does it fit into my understanding of Christianity?
Like Lois, I had been a professor and was interested in pedagogy, so I was interested in how the talks were structured and how he conveyed his points.
When Less's talks focused on ethics, I felt like I was listening to my dad at the dinner table talking about what's wrong and how we should be
Other talks felt more evangelical, like a call to conversion, throw your life into the Buddha.
My basic strategy is to please the talks upset me because I felt like he was presenting impossible demands. I wanted to be seen to know that I'm okay.
Even if I didn't know how to follow these instructions. In my head, I knew that these were not demands, but my core belief was running the show.
I noticed these reactions in other teachers.
I was very moved when I read Crooked Cucumber, the biography of Shinru Suzuki
The love students had for him was palpable. And so was the way that he touched them.
I started reading it again because it was so touching. However, I noticed it was causing me to reject myself.
My mother loved her older brother, Spart. He was kind and pleasant, always cheerful.
That's how Shen Ru Suzuki was, and who I thought I should be.
But I would never be like him. I'm just not like that. So I stopped reading the book to avoid
rejecting myself
It also happened with Angie. She was the director of Jikoji, as you mentioned.
I started to go to her talks at the Quaker Center. It was a great opportunity. I could walk to the center for a period of meditation, a talk, and a discussion.
The most valuable opportunity was that Angie's talks upset me.
She reminded me of my mother.
After the talk, there would be time for questions and comments, usually a number of people would say how much the talk meant to them and
how much Angie was touching them, and that made me feel even more isolated.
So I would walk home thinking through why what she said upset me and I would be very specific, taking certain points and trying to flesh them out like what she should have said, what she didn't say, and how Joko would frame it
Looking back, I wish that I had focused more on my experience.
In a way, I was doing what I could, intentionally doing something that upset me and trying to understand and articulate what was happening.
And I want to clarify, it's like I know like Angie, my mom, my dad I knew they're not the problem. This is something in me, but so I'm not like trying to
Make them wrong. But my it's basically this core belief and then trying to somehow get it
fix somehow
When Angie announced that she was leading a retreat at Jikoji, I was excited and signed up. I knew about Jikoji, but had never been there.
I enjoyed the retreat. It was often raining. I was nervous about the meals where we did oreoke, a ritualized way to eat.
But I did okay. I attended all the meditations.
After the retreat, I felt the release, like I had been holding my breath.
I realized that one reason I felt so good at the retreat was that I was doing everything I was told. I was following the schedule.
I stopped seeing Angie and didn't go back to Jikoji for over six months. I needed to let whatever it was that upset me work its way through. I didn't want my practice to be based on obedience and pleasing.
When Marika suggested that I read one of Joko's books, I bought one
I read a couple of chapters, but it didn't appeal to me.
I would meet Marika every Monday
In those sessions, she would sometimes talk about Joko and tell stories. That got me more intrigued with Joko. So I picked up the book again.
This time it clicked
She could help me face reality, inspire me at the same time
For years before going to bed, I would read Joko. I would read until something resonated. Sometimes it was just a sentence or two, like the heart of practice is learning to work with pain.
The next day, I would continue to work with the passage.
I worked with Joko's teachings for my practice and with Marika for my struggles in my life, relationships, work, and myself.
Marika shared Joko's views. And Marika's love was enabling me to hear Joko with more capacity.
I felt seen by Marika.
Often it seemed that she understood me more than I understood myself.
I would periodically decide that I didn't need to read Jiko after a couple of days
I realized that I did need to go back. Joko was keeping me in tune with reality. On my own, I would formulate my ideas, but something was off
I was reminded of this on my mom's 95th birthday.
The celebration was on a river boat in the Mississippi. One of the guests was Leonard Freeman, who had been a priest at my mom's church.
I told him my new theory of Christianity after all my Buddhism and meditation
He listened patiently and said, not really
And he explained why he thought I was off, but I couldn't take it in. My own views sounded right and good, even if they missed the point.
Jiko wrote about practice in a way that felt relevant to my experience. At first, the main issue I worked with was resistance. She'd say, you don't want to do this. I'd think. That's right. I don't want to do this.
My basic strategy didn't work with Joko. She didn't want me to practice to please her.
It wasn't that she didn't care. The only time I visited her, she made it very clear that she was available to talk about my practice when I returned home.
In fact, Marika said that one time she wanted to attend a retreat and Joko basically kept pushing back. No, you don't, and arguing with her And she was forcing Marika to own going on a retreat for her own terms, not
To be pleasing
Most of the time, the main issue was uncomfortable feelings. Joko makes it very clear that when you meditate, you should expect uncomfortable feelings.
That you will see things about yourself that you don't like. I found that really helpful and true to my experience. Rather than reinforcing my strategy, I was told to look at them.
Rather than feeling like the painful feelings were a sign that there was something wrong with me, I was told that they are to be expected.
I need to experience them to have more freedom
In November 2020, just before I turned 59, I was upset.
I use Joco's teachings to work with the experience. I stayed with the feeling and asked myself if it was okay to be upset.
I did this repeatedly. Suddenly, I realized it was okay.
I realize that forgiveness is an understanding and not a feeling.
For me, it is not a conversion experience. For me, it starts with an understanding that there's nothing wrong with me, even if I don't feel okay about myself.
It may not sound that impressive. But it felt like my first genuine insight after 40 years of struggling with Christianity and Buddhism.
It felt important because I had a better understanding of how to work more skillfully with my experience.
That summer for my mom's 99th birthday. We met on a boat ride on Lake Minnetonka
I was curious what Leonard would think about my insight.
He smiled. He liked it
So
So we have time
Did anyone have any comments or questions? Comments or
Very good so I don't answer.
Do you think your Episcopal faith was leading you here all along?
In the sense that it was failing me.
Just looking for something else.
I mean, I think one of the things, you know, I mean, you can't bring everything in, but I had my aunt was in self-realization fellowship.
Which is like a Hindu-Christian thing, and I had a sister who's in Ekankar, which is like a
It's actually a Sikh mystic based kind of thing. And
So I think I was exposed to different things and
Yeah, but yeah, I don't really know if it led me here. I think that if I had made Episcopalian, you know, the Christianity work, I wouldn't
Would I be here. I just always found it hard to bring all these images and ideas.
Makes sense.
So you mentioned that
You would like the Bill Campo and Steve Harvey that you don't like
I
How did you start to come over the billing
Oh, so the question is, if you have these feelings come up that you don't feel good about, how do you actually deal with them? I think part of it is first understanding. Like if you go back to these
cards, you know, like, when I saw that
Okay, I'm working on love today. And then I interact with somebody, and I'd start to realize, you know, this is actually, like, I do something for them, and then I feel good about myself, and I'm like, this actually isn't
This isn't genuine love. And
It doesn't feel good. And I think that part of it is having an understanding of
that you have these ways of coping to manage your experience, and one of the reasons I read
such a long part of Becker is here, you know, there's… as you're a child, you have these amazing experiences, but also it's kind of scary and overwhelming, and you don't have control
And so you're trying to manage your experiences. And so I think that understanding
That
You have like, say you're not that comfortable, like a snide comment or something, you just don't like that you do to people. Understanding kind of where it comes from
And understanding that it's not really what you want and you can kind of
And like with
I think it's also like sin, like remorse versus feeling bad about yourself, like feeling bad about yourself kind of like reinforces it
But feeling remorse is like you hurt somebody, you don't like it, you're gonna, you know, try to be different. So I think part of it's just trying to get some space around it.
How do you determine what you want?
We have to repeat the question. Oh, the question was, how do you determine what you want? Well, yeah, for me, it's not always easy, but
You mean like in your practice or in general?
Maybe.
Both. I think
Well, part of it is sitting with it. Like for becoming an electrical engineer, I was in the career counseling. I go through these lists. I did some interviews and then it just sort of like, yeah, this makes sense based on my gifts and things.
But in spirituality, I think
I've had that sense of like there's something here that I want.
And like I was saying with Choco, it's like you read something and it kind of fits like this makes sense. This is something that
And just sort of working with that thread and you know Lois used to talk about context as
The more you know about a subject, the more interesting it becomes. And so it's like, as you enter into something like Buddhism
It becomes richer and deeper and and so it has… it carries you in some ways.
Did you continue to practice your
daily life
And you've got more into spirituality or is it something that
It's either or
No, well, I mean, some people think you have to the question was, did I
Keep working and have a life. Yeah, I was always… my dad didn't respect his sister because she felt like he felt like her being a nun was like dropping out. So my dad was very skeptic
anyone's faith, he was always challenging. And so
I felt like I was trying to always maintain work, and in fact, I was working at a startup, and there's only, like, 30 people, and there were three of us who had a meditation practice, and they laid off about 3 or 4 people
of those 2 were laid off.
Because they were just not taking work as seriously, whereas I was always trying to
Do both.
But that's not, you know, I mean, that's a choice. I mean, I don't think
So when you shared your experience and story, you mentioned something about like love and transactional. I think I I missed that piece. Could you
Sure. The question is why was I experiencing love as transactional?
I think
So
What I was experiencing was kind of like, well, I'm going to do this because I want something from that person. And then like say, say you give some money to somebody
who's begging at the grocery store, and then your thought is like, oh, yeah, I'm a good person, that kind of… that's kind of what I was noticing. It's like, I do this, and I feel good about myself, or
If they do this, then I'm not going to do that. And that's what I mean by transactional. If you think about, say, a child and a parent
They have, they're loving the child no matter how the child is acting Maybe you know it looks differently and it's not always perfect. But it's not transactional in the sense that the child needs feeding. They feed it
Doesn't matter if the child's crying. Whereas the transactional is more like, you know, parents, when they get a little older, I'll give you a car if you get good grades or something like that. And that's more of the transaction. And again, that's not always transactional
The other thing about this, it's not so much that
Yeah, you don't want to be hard on yourself in the sense of
We have… we're just doing these things, and there's always a certain amount of transaction involved and stuff, but you also want to understand, like, oh, this isn't… because the whole point of this is you're trying to get to some more freedom
More spaciousness. You don't want to be run by these things where everything's always transactional.
Is that okay
Did you get in the zen
There was a question, did I get into Zoom?
Yeah, I did. You can see with this is my
Oh, how? Well, originally, you know, you hear about it in the culture from like the beatniks and all of that, but
And my aunt was where they meditated and stuff
But it was really just when I had started to meditate, I realized that I was interested and
That got me interested in it.
Thank you.
Somewhat in contrast to Christianity. In Buddhism, there's a lot of talk
No self or non-self or something
This has that kind of
Study or
For a challenge
have been helpful or problematic
So the question is the no self or non-dualism, has that been helpful or hurtful? I think that, yeah, it definitely helps in the sense that Christianity can vary
be very dualistic. I… I was reading like the burial of the dead just to kind of remember and things and it has like these paragraphs that are absolutely beautiful. And then it's like, oh my God, this is just hard to take
And there is that it can have this kind of dualism of
you know, God's the parent, and you're the child, and you're
Yeah, so that can be problematic. I think also the Buddhism has this kind of
Well, look at yourself. Notice these things running in you. They're not you. There's something deeper. Whereas I think Paul's
I think the problem, say, with reading stuff like Paul, it's in a way, it's similar, like our Martin Luther or
About grace and that you can't earn it. But it somehow I keep confusing it with
I gotta do this, you know what I mean? So I do think that Buddhism sort of non-dual, presents it in a way that it was easier for me to take in. Although I try not to worry. You know, some of this non-dual stuff is get a little
Okay, try not to worry about it too much
Great things
What time do we usually go to? Just going to get an update asking
Oh, okay. Anyone online had a question?
And Jackie
Hi, Ross, and thank you so much for your talk.
I deeply appreciated this talk, and it really speaks to me.
And you've given me a lot that is.
Food for me.
And I thank you for that. I don't really have any big question. I just wanted to know.
Pujoko is?
Oh. Charlotte Joco Beck.
She was one of my Zoomie's teachers in Los Angeles
Oh, yeah, yeah, thank you.
Yeah.
Okay, any other questions online?
All right, so it's 11:30. Sorry
So, okay