[00:00:14] Speaker A: Welcome to my Bob Thurman podcast.
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[00:00:48] Speaker B: This is episode 336.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: Okay, so welcome everybody. I'm so delighted and honored to have with me today the wonderful Henry Schuchman.
Roshi Henry Schuchmann, I must say, and I have a really proper introduction for him a little bit thanks to my beloved Beth Grossman, who is our arranger or what we call Saki in Sanskrit. The mediating friend Henry Schuchman is a poethen author and Zen master in the Sambo Zen lineage. After a spontaneous spiritual awakening at the age of 19 on a beach, as I recall, he embarked on a long journey of healing and deeper awakening through meditation. Since then, he has been leading a growing number of practitioners in Europe and the US. He is the spiritual director emeritus, I think a bit young for emeritus, but anyway, emeritus of Mountain Cloud Zen center in Santa Fe, which I read the description of in one of his books, which must be a beautiful place. I look forward to visiting if I ever get there. New Mexico. Henry has also created an app, a meditation app, which I'm sure is very solid from reading about how he describes meditation, called the way, a new first of its kind meditation app, which offers a single long term path into the deep end of meditation. That's wonderful. So welcome, Henry. So happy to have you here.
[00:02:58] Speaker C: Well, I'm totally honored and delighted to be in your presence on Zoom. You know, I've been a big fan for many a year.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: Really?
[00:03:06] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: And David, I only recently discovered you, which shows my total backwardness, because you are a fantastic writer. I'm so humbled by your excellent way of writing. Oh, I should say Henry went to Oxford as well as got to be a Zen master, and he's really brilliant, no question about it. And when you read one of his books, you really enter into the action and it's so learned also, and it's, but without very lightly, you know, for the Zen master's likeness, it's incredibly learning, western as well as eastern things, so it's really worthwhile. And also, our main topic of today is this wonderful book, original love, the four inns on the path to awakening, which are really excellent inns.
You could stay at any one of them, I decided, from reading a little bit about them. So anyway, Henry, it's so great Henry. So. So where are you at now? How come you're an emeritus? You're such a. You're so young. I mean, you have a nice beard, but you are definitely still young from my perspective.
[00:04:20] Speaker C: Well, I don't know. I mean, I may, I hope I could have your longevity and health span, you know, maybe. Maybe. But I'm actually 62, so I'm not that young, really young. Well, it's been a long, hard slog for me to get just a little bit sort of clearer and more sort of less ruled by my own psychology over the decades. It's taken a long time, and I'm lucky to have a Zen sort of lineage and organization that I was okay to be with. I was very fussy. I didn't like a lot of spiritual organizations. I didn't like being part of a community. I thought they were all a bit cult like and strange. And I was very. You know, I was a solitary kind of. I mean, I was married, but as far as spirituality at all, I was very suspicious and, you know, distrustful for a long time. And it took. I just got lucky, I think, with one particular teacher who was very ordinary man, you know, he wasn't trying to be special. He was just super ordinary. A retired lawyer.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: Was that Yamada Roshi? Yamada Khorne?
[00:05:34] Speaker C: Well, no, this was actually. He probably was the same, but I actually was. My first teacher that I really started feeling okay with was called John Gaynor, you know, no titles. I mean, he is actually a roshi, but he never used that word. And he was an Englishman, you know. And sometimes we just meet in a cafe to have in a so called docusan, you know, or at a bus stop. It was very ordinary.
[00:06:00] Speaker A: You made him out of bus stop?
[00:06:02] Speaker C: Yeah, sometimes sitting on a bench in Holland park, you know, in London. And I liked the ordinariness. It was easier for me to trust it, actually, you know, rather than the robes. And, I mean, I think it's fine to have robes if you want that. Of course, it's none of my business to judge that, but just for me personally, I didn't want practice. That was really different from how I was and how light the world was. You know, I sort of felt it ought to not need to be so different, you know. And I come from England, which already has a lot of cultural baggage, a lot of convention, and a lot of, you know, hidden, sort of semi hidden formality in the structures of relationship and all the class system and everything. And I didn't want to leave that and replace it with another set of conventions.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: That's totally great. I completely agree with you, actually. And I particularly do love the Dalai Lama so much because he does occasionally in a ceremonial setting, he has the robes. He's a buddhist monk, sits up on a big throne and listen to that. But then when off that, he totally is informal.
He will not tolerate all kinds of groveling and weird behavior on the part of westerners particularly. He can't quite avoid it completely with Tibetans who have ingrained cultural thing about it. But even there, he tries to encourage them not to be like that and be very informal. And if we get to it, I might mention some cases where you see his extreme insistence on people recognizing his ordinariness as well as his extraordinary. So I agree with you. My original teacher. In fact, when I first met him, I thought he, you know, I was in a very powerful field, you know, but I thought the big llama on the dragon with the robes and the whole thing was in another room. And he was like some kind of inferior third degree secretary because he was, like, so simple, like wearing a lungi. And it was like, I didn't think he was the source of that field at all when I first met him. And I hardly considered him. I was waiting to see a guy on the dragon.
[00:08:20] Speaker C: Yes, yes, yes.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: And then later I discovered. And then all through our study, he refused to be my guru.
He said no. He said, I'm not alive enough to be your guru, and you're not alive to have a guru. And if I act like your guru and you pretend that I am, and then when I scold you or criticize you, you'll be really angry with me. That's terrible sin. I for you and for me. So I'll just be your friend.
When you pour on too much soy sauce on the dumpling, then I'll give you hell.
I completely agree with your skepticism and your suspicion. I really like it. And I really like your.
So that's your reason for your emeritus. Because at the end of the. Well, by the way, I should mention to the audience you have another wonderful book called one Blade of grass. This one, I don't know if you see it backwards like I do.
[00:09:16] Speaker C: No, we're seeing it straight. It's looking right.
[00:09:18] Speaker A: Blade of grass. And it's a story of your beyond the 19 year old thing. Much deeper, more totally amazing experiences that are described both humbly but accurately and very powerfully extraordinary, I think. Extraordinary book as well. And in that, I'm very suspicious of people having enlightenment experiences. Totally and I think you did a wonderful job with it. I really think so.
[00:09:52] Speaker C: You're very kind. Thank you.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: Of course, when you first, then went for teacher training, and you're sort of roshi, like, a little bit higher authority is sort of in your order. And I also like that you. You're critical of some gurus and masters in the west who set themselves up as something new, and they know better than the tradition and blah, blah, blah, you know, and then they don't really make a fuss about the lineage and the ancestors, spiritual ancestors, beyond familial and tribal ancestors, spiritual ancestors. And you completely cover that base beautifully, I think so, which gives one tremendous relief, because otherwise, it's kind of dangerous. When someone declares themselves, it all starts with them. You know, it's a little bit worrisome.
[00:10:41] Speaker C: I think it's tricky territory. And the more we can really, I don't know, be skeptical about ourselves and skeptical about our own spiritual accomplishments, so to speak. I mean, the better, because it's so easy to mislead oneself.
[00:11:00] Speaker A: Yes, totally. The idea that one could be suspicious of one's own continuing thoughts having returned from the vastness and then having a little thought of some kind of one of those obstacles, you know, that you did so beautifully.
You mentioned the aversion desire on your. In the original love book. I would have opened a page just before because I wasn't sure where I would ask you. You talk about the hindrances from way back in Buddhism, from Theravada desire, aversion, dullness, restlessness and doubt, and which are. Which are different from Klesha. Right. These are meditational hindrances, I believe. Right. To developing Samadhi one pointedness. And do you really unpack these very thoroughly in the app? Do you introduce them to people with the app? Can you want to tell us about how you do it in the app? It would be great.
[00:11:59] Speaker C: Yes. I mean, in principle, my sort of working theory kind of thing is that, in a sense, sort of. I mean, this may sound counterintuitive, but in a certain sense, kind of. I feel that nothing need be a hindrance, actually, if we can only understand what we're experiencing and break it down into its parts and just let it be. You know, the. I really feel that the wisest words of all are let it be. You know, let it be. Because actually, I find. I mean, again, you know, I don't know whether I'm right, but I do find that anything I really dislike that comes up in meditation, you know, if I can just track it down and be with the actual sensation that I'm finding difficult and learn somehow find a little shift can happen where I just thoroughly allow it, then it can very often become beautiful and actually bring on. Well, as you know from the title of the book, I think sort of a sense of love even can kind of open up around what had seemed to be an obstacle. And when that love opens, I mean, really, all is well. You know, all is okay. Yeah, maybe something sort of to work on in some way. But the love is more important. Really?
[00:13:38] Speaker A: Yes. That sounds really great. That's very tantric, actually.
I mean, it is.
How do you distinguish then between the hindrance and the meditating, which you. Which you beautifully say you overcome by welcoming and then trying to include it in your scope of original love, which I think I'm going to utterly admire. So don't get me wrong. But on the other hand, if you're filled with hatred, if, for example, you've had a terrible thing happen somehow you survived a holocaust or something, but your relatives didn't, so you're bitterly driven by resentment and this and that then. But don't you actually want to get rid of that yourself for it? Because it will eat away at you?
[00:14:25] Speaker C: Yes, yes. But then how do you deal with it?
[00:14:28] Speaker A: We love it that you're sensitively reacting. I can see that. And welcome that you're not ignoring the plight of those who suffered so badly and evil of those who committed the evil. But then, on the other hand, the resentment that eats at you separately, how do you. What do you. How do you go, how do you overcome it? How does that overcome it?
[00:14:46] Speaker C: Well, yeah, that's a great question. But really, in my simplistic view, even that resentment, I want to. I want to know it in my own experience.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Right. Okay.
[00:14:59] Speaker C: And once again, yes. How can I allow this resentment? Because it is a rise. If it's arising, it's arising.
I want to start with allowing it and basically love it to death. I mean, in the balm, in the solvent, in the solution of great, boundless, unconditional love, it will for real. And it's not just a sort of a trick I can deploy as needed. And then I get off the cushion and bam, it's back again, you know? No, it actually can really dissolve. I mean, honestly, when you. I mean, I had 42 relatives I never knew in the Holocaust. You know, my. There was a shockman, spelt differently. Lived in a little village in southeastern Poland. And in 19, 30, 39, there was a census in that village, and there were 42 people called Shuchman. And in 1946, there was another census. Of course, there were none. And all of them died in this camp called sobiboard, which was not too far away. One of the earliest camps. They didn't.
[00:16:12] Speaker A: What was it called, the name of the camp?
[00:16:14] Speaker C: Sobiboard.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: Sobibor.
[00:16:17] Speaker C: It actually predates the gas Cyclone B. They were using exhaust fumes to begin with from trucks.
[00:16:25] Speaker A: So that was more of a work camp than an extermination camp. They worked them to death. Is that right?
[00:16:29] Speaker C: And they then they used exhaust fumes from trucks to kill them. Yeah. And I recently. I mean, literally in the last two months, somebody sent me a white stone from Poland. A polish friend who's translating one blade of grass, actually. And he sent me this white stone. And I opened up the little bag. It was a little kind of gauze, golden bag like you might get soap in in a fancy hotel. I opened this little bag, pulled out this white stone. And I just. Something in me. I didn't know what it was, actually, when it arrived, but something in me knew. And I started. I started tearing up. And I felt this great flush of warmth and feeling flow through me. And it turned out it was actually a little stone from the memorial field of stones at this camp.
And my relatives all died, you know what? And I. You know, when my. One of my. Another of my Zen teachers started asking me to go to Germany to teach.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: Yes. Yes.
[00:17:36] Speaker C: You know, some twelve years ago. And I didn't really want to go because I had grown up with british and jewish sort of horror, terror, kind of. I want to know about Germany. I just didn't want to know about it. You know, really closed it off from my sort of world almost. I just. It was a blank space where Germany was. But she said, no, you got to go there and start teaching this dharma the best.
I went, and I didn't know. I didn't know what to do about all these feelings I had around. It was so complicated. And the first talk I gave, I thought, I can't just say nothing about what it's like for me. And I don't really speak German, but a little bit. I learned a little bit of school. Among the many languages we were taught back then in England, there was a bit of German. And I began, ich bin. I'm help Judah. Help Judah.
Britannische. You know, I'm half british, half jewish. And on both sides I was taught or inherited this, you know, denial, really, of the sort of Germany's not in our. Not in our world, you know, in our field. And actually, it became something in me loosened just saying those words in front of all these german people. And I realized, oh, my God, there's a whole cluster of unforgiveness, of unreconciliation, of unacknowledgement, that an unwelcoming, unwelcoming refusal. I'm carrying, and I sort of feel if I'm carrying it anywhere, somehow the whole field is a little bit compromised and blocked, you know, and it helped, you know, the heart softened and something expanded and some resistance melted, you know. And I sort of, you know, I believe that love, actually, it sounds so corny, but I sort of feel that love is, is the way.
[00:19:57] Speaker A: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
I totally agree with you. And I was so delighted, after reading the, the blade of grass, to read the original love. Why did you say original? What? What did you mean? What do you mean? Well, first of all, how do you define love? Yeah, well, how do you define it?
Yeah, I know. All things are beyond definition, ultimately, I realize.
[00:20:22] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: How do you define love?
[00:20:25] Speaker C: Yeah, thank you for asking. I mean, in the case of this, I'll just say something about original first, then about love. So original, actually, I was honestly, I was trying to criticize, in a way, two things, you know. The first was original sin.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: Oh, good. Yes.
[00:20:42] Speaker C: Which I think, I think is a really, I mean, a lot of us may not really believe in it, you know, but I think it's infiltrated western culture in hideous ways, you know, and I really feel that we may not like to admit it, but there's a lot of unworthiness as common in the west and, you know, and, you know, like it or not, and. But original love, I think, is sort of better. If you're going to have one original thing, let it be original love.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: So it's resonating with that one, this one. That's wonderful. Wonderful, really.
[00:21:20] Speaker C: But, you know, on the other hand, as well, in Zen, you know, there's this. It's sort of a koan, and it's also a kind of, not a doctrine, but a sort of a view or perhaps a point.
[00:21:33] Speaker A: Original face.
[00:21:34] Speaker C: Original face, exactly. You know, have you discovered, have you seen your original face that you had even before your parents were born? So have you found what you really are? Have you found what you really are that predates you, predates your parents, predates, perhaps predates everything. But you can find this thing that's sort of without time, you know.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:21:59] Speaker C: It's not really a thing, but we don't know what to call it. But I think.
And again, I'm open to being wrong, but I find that in my own case, the times that that has been clearer and discovery of it and students and friends, when they discover it, there's always a feeling of love like I am beloved. All of this is beloved. No separation anymore. It brings on a strong love, I find.
[00:22:29] Speaker A: Yes, I think that's totally wonderful. I love that and it's original. But it's happening right now too, right?
[00:22:37] Speaker C: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Because there's some sense in which of course, this very moment is arising right now and it's out of that origin. There's no origin. We don't know what it is. The nameless, the formless. But this table in front of me, a computer and your lovely, beautiful face on the computer. It's all arising right now.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: That's right. Did you. So there's a thing. There's a thing where you. I'm trying to look for that. I marked too many corners of too many pages. There was one place where you said something I really loved, I mean, many things. But then I marked so many of these corner pages in the. Toward the end of your.
Your. Everything gone where you, as I heard John speak. John now, I guess, is your ordinary guru Roshi and John speaks just now I felt as if I pursed on the edge of a great cliff before I had time to think about whether I might step off a thunderbolt dropped on the crown of my then it says, falling off the cushion, lying on the floor, weeping, everything gone. All the hard work of holding together the world as Henry knew it. Gone. No more Henry, no more world, nothing no more then truly nothing. True, nothing. Everything annihilated, nothing left, nothing at all.
And so on and so on. Not even awareness of nothing. That was very key to me. Not even awareness of nothing. A gap, but not even a gap. Blackness, but not even that. It's hard to know what to call a death. Perhaps death seems apt as term one impossible fact. Nothing at all. Not emptiness, which might still suggest space with nothing in it, but nothing. Nothing to see. No one to see, no seeing.
This was reality at last. Nothing. Not even a witness. The ultimate joke. How can it be a joke?
I really liked it. It's really good. I worry about a little bit, but then this other one. But since after that there's this other one. When you say this thing that. I felt tremendous relief reading it.
This kind of state according to the old way of thinking, I'm reading his words, by the way, dear participant, and you are a participant according to the old way of thinking would obviously wear off after a while as well. Yet year after year, if anything, the wonder and gratitude grew, the space of the heart welling up daily with love. So don't stop worrying about death.
It confounded all conditioned expectations.
But that's what this practice is for, to deliver such a blow to our conditioned construction of reality that the factory itself is knocked out.
Mu, chimotsu, mujuzo. Not one single thing in an inexhaustible treasury. Elsa says shinku nyouku means emptiness, right? Yes, emptiness. Voidness. I tried. I prefer the translation voidness.
[00:25:55] Speaker C: By the way, it means skylar.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: It's only two syllables. Yes, void. And sometimes. Oh, yes.
[00:26:04] Speaker C: Nice, nice, nice.
[00:26:04] Speaker A: Sometimes it's used as an adjective. The Shunya is shunya. And shunya ta sometimes uses an adjective. And then you have to say empty. And then in some tibetan things about book of the dead things, then you have to say the empties. It always makes you think of beer cans growing in, some pollution, you know, some empties.
[00:26:24] Speaker C: Throwing out the empties in the morning.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: Doesn'T get reified quite in that way.
[00:26:28] Speaker C: Right?
[00:26:29] Speaker A: So I do prefer. But people get shocked. They don't like it scary, you know, and blah, blah, blah. Shinku myo, the true goneness, you say, for emptiness there, which I love, that. That scornless is great, wondrous being, you know? Oh, really? I think this was the one. There, you see this? This is. This is it. To drop into bottomless, timeless, spaceless zero.
Did you know that it is zero in ancient indian mathematics? Shunya.
[00:27:03] Speaker C: I did not know.
[00:27:05] Speaker A: And they invented zero. They invented decimal system, not the Arabs, because they were dealing with astronomical huge numbers. So they invented it. And the word is shunya.
[00:27:18] Speaker C: That's fascinating. I never knew that. I always thought the Arabs had invented zero. How fascinating.
[00:27:22] Speaker A: I know. Well, that's because they got it from India when they conquered there. And then that's how it trickled into the dark ages in our benighted european background.
[00:27:30] Speaker D: Right.
[00:27:31] Speaker C: How fascinating. Wow.
[00:27:34] Speaker A: And that is to. So that is to emerge as wondrous being from which nothing is excluded. It is precisely what is excluded, since it's nothing. A world beyond things where, although phenomena appear as before, it's impossible to say whether there are or aren't things. It no longer matters. As Master Nanzen said, this is not mine, this is not Buddha. It's not a thing. Especially the tiniest phenomenon is beloved, is love itself. This is the seed of your next book that we're celebrating today in spite of being limited mortal multiflor beings, we are nevertheless capable of finding timeless love in the depths of our being. I think it's just really great, and that's where you're at. Then you must be helping people find this timeless love.
[00:28:25] Speaker C: I'm really hoping to, you know.
[00:28:27] Speaker A: Yes, well, your kids know it. You know what? I love this, and I want to just say more in my endorsement of dear Henry.
When he came home from work to see his beloved wife, his kids were jumping on a trampoline, and they expected him, because they were more in the timeless than him, in his organized condition, accomplishment mode, expected him to join them on the trampoline, which he actually did.
I was deeply impressed by that. And then you jumped, flopped up and down and made them bounce up. So you got back to the kitchen you could, but you did do it. That's, that shows, I think, really, the way.
In other words, I'll get you guys later. Instead of that, you jumped right in with them. I was deeply impressed by that.
So what can we best remember now? Now, the other thing you said when you met the Roshi Ramda Khan, you felt, he's very, very deep, and you felt him feel your experience, and you felt very comforted by that, like a kind of seal of approval, a little bit like you have to use the expression of a hand reached up inside you through the, in the heart and, and felt you sensitively, without intrusiveness, felt where your heart was, and you felt very comforted, and you felt immediate connection and friendship with him. But then he rang his bell and kicked her.
What was that?
[00:30:10] Speaker C: Well, you know, these Zen masters handle. Yes, you go. You got enough now out you go, you know. But, you know, he's become my main teacher. Actually, forgive me, but he's Yamada Ryoun, this one. He's the son of Yamada kun. It's that been influential Zen masters, I think, in, in the west. But anyway, he, what was so beautiful then was that I felt two things, I guess. One was, wow, something in him knows what's going on in me. You know, that level of connectedness could, that level of discovery or something about who we are could meet. So that was very beautiful in itself. But on top of that, I knew somehow, because that happened, that he could teach me more, that I could go further, that somehow I could, you know, they talk about, you see, the ox. This is in the ox herding pictures of Zen. You know, the third one, you get a glimpse of the ox, and then in the fourth one, you catch the ox. So it doesn't go away anymore. And I thought later, I thought, well, the way this has stuck around, maybe I have now caught the ox, but there's much more. That's only the fourth picture. The fifth picture, taming the ox. And then you ride the ox, and then no more ox. Ox gone. Get about the ox. And I thought, I mean, I didn't think of it at the time like this, but I did realize this man can teach me more. He can guide me further, you know, and he still does, actually. Now it's about 17 years later. He's still guiding me, actually. I mean, along with many others, of course.
[00:32:10] Speaker A: But is he your age or is he a little older?
[00:32:13] Speaker C: No, he's 84 now. And he's still. He looks younger than me. You know, when I look at him, I can't believe he's nothing, 60, you know, and he's very vigorous, kind of slight, you know, japanese man. And he's still running a company that's very successful, actually, and still teaching about a hundred Zen teachers around the world. So it's kind of, I don't know how he's very sort of quiet, but just full of smooth, powerful energy.
[00:32:49] Speaker A: You.
[00:32:49] Speaker C: Know, it's very nice to be around, you know, and he.
[00:32:51] Speaker A: Yeah, well, right. When you discover, I mean, on a very simplistic level, when you discover your own emptiness, which you could call transparency, then you automatically become involuntarily empathetic about others.
So you also feel their energy completely.
And that's what he was doing with you, right? He was feeling your energy, right?
[00:33:17] Speaker C: Yes, I think that's right.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: So that brings me then to the next question, which was, how do you define love?
[00:33:23] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:33:24] Speaker C: Yeah. Oh, man. Well, on one level, I would like to just say it's about connection.
It's about, you know, wide and intimate connection and not resisting it and just giving oneself to it. And, you know, there's the.
Of course, there are many flavors of love, you know, but I kind of. These days I think it shows up in various ways and all of them are good. You know, it shows up in various ways. And every one of these ways of loving, of appreciating, of cherishing, of really appreciating and cherishing every one of them is probably that same original love in action, showing up slightly different dimensions, facets, aspects, you know, and that's very powerful.
[00:34:20] Speaker A: Well, then, you know, the. In the greek thing, and you very not. You're more knowledgeable than I about the greek thing, but in the. In the greek thing, you have, Eros. And agape. Right. Which are differentiated by people.
[00:34:31] Speaker C: Yes, yes.
[00:34:32] Speaker A: That Eros has a self centered element to it, of desire, of wishing to possess the beloved.
[00:34:39] Speaker C: Right, correct.
[00:34:41] Speaker A: And then agape is altruistic, wishing only for the happiness of the beloved.
[00:34:46] Speaker C: Yes, exactly. Exactly. And Eros, somehow in that you're saying.
[00:34:52] Speaker A: That they're all good, you're somehow unifying those in a definition of love, which is fascinating, I think.
[00:34:58] Speaker C: Well, I would qualify that a little bit because that Eros kind of love also was seen as a kind of malady in some cases, in the ancient.
[00:35:08] Speaker A: That's the major way. Yes.
[00:35:10] Speaker C: Yeah. Greece and Rome.
[00:35:14] Speaker A: Mixed with greed.
[00:35:15] Speaker C: Exactly, exactly. The acquisitiveness. I've got to get you. I got to keep you. I need you. That's not quite the same. That's what I'm talking about. Is that exactly love, you know? Or is that. I mean, there may be love in there, for sure, and there may be those marvelous moments of a kind of melting of the border between me and you, of course, in intense romantic love, for sure. And that's a wonderful thing. Of course it is. And that can be the thing also, that the. In. Under the spell of romantic love, the whole world becomes radiant and beautiful, and I need you so that I can experience the world this way, you know? But actually, I think it's a mistake. You can.
That's one way of opening up to loving the whole world and seeing its beauty. But it's a conditional way, this practice way is. It's much less conditional. We're finding that actually, we're intrinsically, you know, part of that great love anyway, and see the radiant beauty of things, you know, without another that we need, you know, in that way of. That sort of greed and desiring kind of way. So, you know, I think. I think Eros is a little more complex. It's not quite so straightforward. I think Agapir is really, my ancient greek teachers in the UK always pronounced it agapir, by the way, but that was. Agapir is a more. That appreciative, cherished, wishing well. Exactly. Altruistic kind of love.
[00:36:51] Speaker A: Yes, yes. Well, this is. I mean, this is really on a very simple level. You know, my tree and, you know, the word maitre, which derives a little bit from matre and a little bit from mitra. Matra means mother, rather, and mitra means friend. So maitre, which is connected to both words, it has an a and an e making an I, you know, my AI, you know, and that is simply. That's the agape. One which is just a wish for the. For the well being and the happiness of the beloved. It isn't. Isn't as much appreciative as it's kind of an insistent that the beloved be happy.
But then what happens when you do that?
What about when someone isn't? Then what do we. What do you. What. How do you. What happens, for example, when Roshi felt your openness in your core that you had experienced and that powerful thing that you described so beautifully at the end of the blade of grass?
What. What. How. What would you call his ability to feel that in you?
Yeah, I'm fishing for empathy.
[00:38:09] Speaker C: Yes. Yes. Got you. Gotcha. Yes, that would indeed be empathy.
That would be a very. Again, I think it would come out of some sort of a boundlessness or borderlessness.
[00:38:21] Speaker A: So where he's feeling you as much into. He's in your skin as much as in his own, so to speak.
[00:38:27] Speaker C: Yes, exactly.
[00:38:28] Speaker A: And then if you think of enlightenment as multiplying that inconceivably, then it's a terrible story of being empathetic with highly suffering beings. Or beings who consider themselves highly suffering. Yes, but then how do we manage that? Does. Can love overwhelm that? Yeah, suffering. Does love overwhelm. But then how.
[00:38:50] Speaker C: Yes, well, some say, you know, that compassion overwhelms that, Karuna. The wish that others suffer less, the wish to relieve suffering is the thing that can overcome the swamping that empathy may produce.
[00:39:12] Speaker A: Yes.
And. Well, then, you know, I don't really like. In the Sanskrit treatises, psychologically, scientific treatises, they etymologize, you know, they love doing what. What westerners call folk etymologies.
They break up to syllables of a word, you know? And so, Karuna. And the na is the negation, you know? So then Karu can mean sort of an expansive feeling of well being in the heart. So Karuna means you give up the feeling of well being in your own heart because you feel the suffering of another. So in a way, it is really. And homologized as empathy. But then there is the warning that empathy would just drag you into the other being, suffering. And if you had a wide openness, you would be a basket case.
Put it as a basket case.
So what is the way of overcoming that? Or is it overcome? So then. Then you, as a Buddha, you have to love yourself, of course, right?
[00:40:16] Speaker C: Yes. Yes. But then you have to welcome your.
[00:40:19] Speaker A: Own being a basketface. Yes, I know. I'm just trying to get.
I'm trying to. I'm fishing.
[00:40:26] Speaker C: Yeah, I sense that you are. Yeah. Well, let's see whether I've got what you're fishing for. I may not have it, you know.
[00:40:32] Speaker A: But, um, I would you have original love?
[00:40:36] Speaker C: Original love sees that actually all is empty. All is one thing and all. Nothing is left out, nothing is excluded. So actually, in a certain sense, well, dare we say it, but in a certain sense, suffering, it's hard to say it, but it is illusory in some level.
It is actually an appearance, like so many others, but only appearance. And to see through it, you actually, I mean, for example, if you're just having a strong negative emotion, first thing you think is, I want to get rid of it. But actually, there's another way of just seeing clearly that it's empty and then ceases to be a problem.
[00:41:26] Speaker A: So you're seeing through it.
[00:41:28] Speaker C: Seeing through it, yes.
[00:41:32] Speaker A: Like when you hit the big nothing, which you called in the first moment, the big nothing, you sort of saw through all your quests and all your possessions and your life and death.
[00:41:45] Speaker C: Yes. And also my spiritual quote, unquote, path, Zen, even Zen, I thought in after that, that Zen, definitely not done. I mean, maybe it's never done, but Zen is not done. And at least as long as you think there is a thing called Zen.
[00:42:05] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:42:06] Speaker C: It should self destruct Zen, which actually.
[00:42:09] Speaker A: Derives from the word for meditation. Right.
[00:42:11] Speaker C: Yes, Dhyana. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:42:15] Speaker A: The Tibetans have a thing you recounted in one of the books, I forget books, one about how someone who was into the tibetan thing told you that Zen had Zog Chen. Oh, David, Richard Davidson told you. That's right.
[00:42:27] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:42:27] Speaker A: They had Zog Chen, where they sort of also went to letting go of everything and so on, like Zen, until you were pleased. Chan or Zen. So you were pleased with that. I thought that was fun.
I've known him for so many years and I love him, too. And.
Right. So, so, in a way, when you, when you had your big nothing, what have you had was just a huge relief. No, in a way. Although you couldn't sit and say, now I have relief. Because in a way you were relieved you weren't, weren't trapped in relief.
[00:43:01] Speaker C: No, no, no, no. And that's when, I mean, I wonder whether this would, you know, there's a, there was, I remember there was some sense of like seeing that the whole process of going through a spiritual training such as I'd been through was kind of a charade.
It was a, it was like a game of hopscotch that pretended it was going somewhere, but it had never really been going anywhere all along.
And that was. And there was just. There was just this. There was just this, you know. And it's a. It's a zen phrase. I know that. I don't really want to use a somebody else's phrase, but it's a good one for this. It's just some utter simplicity.
[00:43:49] Speaker A: Some somewhat.
[00:43:51] Speaker C: Utter simplicity.
[00:43:53] Speaker A: Utter imprisoning.
[00:43:55] Speaker C: Utter simplicity.
[00:43:57] Speaker A: Utter imprisoning.
[00:43:59] Speaker C: No, no, no. Utter simplicity.
[00:44:02] Speaker A: Utter simplicity. Oh, yes, of course. Thank you. Yes, sorry.
Utter simplicity. Yes.
[00:44:09] Speaker C: My terrible accent. Yeah, yeah.
[00:44:11] Speaker A: No, no, I just. It's my hearing. It's the thing. So, yes. So, in a way, is there. Could it be that even beings who are suffering, supposedly, they don't know what they're doing right?
They know not what they're doing right, because they have misnowing. I don't like ignorance. The word ignorance for avidya, in Sanskrit, the great masters, you know, of India, they clause it as, which means actually knowing what is not the case, as if it was the case.
And actually, Oxford Dictionary has mis knowledge in it. There is that word, but it's archaic, you know, it's like nobody uses it. But I like. I use it for avidya misnowledge. That's very good. That's very good comprehension. We have misperception, but we never have misnowing. But I like to use that.
[00:45:10] Speaker C: That's lovely.
[00:45:11] Speaker A: No, they don't know what they really. What they fully. What people don't know what they're fully really feeling, is what I'm trying to say.
So therefore, even their deadly suffering, is there another thing that they have, in other words, their Buddha nature suffering?
[00:45:30] Speaker D: Yeah, exactly.
[00:45:31] Speaker C: Exactly. They are, I would say, you know, original love.
[00:45:35] Speaker A: Exactly.
It's like, you know, Mark Epstein. Do you know Mark Epstein?
[00:45:41] Speaker C: I've never met him, but I've read a couple of his books that.
[00:45:44] Speaker A: Aren't they fun? I love Mark. I do. He's a dear friend. He lives nearby me here in the cutskills. And we do a seminar together once a year, usually in August, and a long time. And he used to write books about the trauma of everyday life.
And now he's finally giving the Zen of therapy, psychotherapy. And then he finally wrote advice not given, which was where he doesn't he think it would be intruding Buddhism to use it in his therapy? So he didn't. But he wrote about it, what he felt like doing. And then finally it says end of psychotherapy.
[00:46:21] Speaker C: Well, I've got that book on my shelf, and I haven't read it yet.
[00:46:24] Speaker A: A lot of fun. It's fun and. But what I wanted, what I mentioned about him is I forgot, actually.
[00:46:32] Speaker C: I'm sorry. I derailed you.
[00:46:34] Speaker A: No, no, I'm derailed myself. You get older, you do derail because you need to relate so much, and then you forgot what it was about. I had a reason and it will pop back in a minute. But it was very, very fun. What I thought I was going to talk about with him, but I can't remember what it is now. Totally lost it. It's being in your presence. I lost it.
[00:46:57] Speaker C: Well, it's all. Well, all is well. You know, just sitting here like this is very nice.
[00:47:01] Speaker A: It is. Would you like to. Let's see.
So would you like to lead a meditation and for people, I think it would be if you like, if you don't have one in front of you. I have a bell here which I can.
[00:47:14] Speaker C: I don't have a bell. I don't have a bell in front of me.
[00:47:16] Speaker A: What if you'd like to lead them in a meditation on original love, one of your, which maybe you have also on your app. I'm sure you've done it a zillion times, but if you'd like to take ten minutes or however long you like.
[00:47:28] Speaker C: Let'S do it right now. Yeah, for sure. And you'd like to do it now, correct?
[00:47:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Would you like to?
[00:47:35] Speaker C: Sure. Sure. Ten minutes.
[00:47:36] Speaker A: I'll ring the bell for you. Okay, thank you.
[00:47:39] Speaker C: And I'll give some guidance. Yeah.
I'm sorry, I couldn't hear. Was that the bell?
[00:47:52] Speaker A: Oh, you didn't hear it?
[00:47:53] Speaker C: No, I didn't hear it. The zoom must have kind of cancelled it, but.
[00:47:57] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:48:03] Speaker C: Okay, that was it. Yeah.
It's funny, I'm not hearing the bell. But you rang it already.
[00:48:10] Speaker A: Yes.
Apple doesn't like it.
[00:48:15] Speaker C: Okay. Okay. Well, let's assume. Okay, everybody else heard the bell, so let's. Let's just, wherever you are, just find a way to be comfortable. Let's start with the body being comfortable. You might, if you're sitting with your back free, it's good to be balanced.
If you're reclining with a supported back, of course. That's just fine. Just rest as you are and deliver your spine into the support.
Really deliver it into the open hand of the support.
And if you're sitting with back free, then tune into the crown of your head, a little area at the top of the head, and let it be floating right over your seat.
[00:49:25] Speaker D: Either way, let your jaw now go slack.
[00:49:32] Speaker C: Imagine that there's a velvet pillow under.
[00:49:35] Speaker D: Your jaw and the jaw is resting on it.
[00:49:43] Speaker C: You might feel it really sink an 8th of an inch.
Likewise, let's allow the shoulders to settle and rest and be slack.
And let the arms also dangle completely.
[00:50:07] Speaker D: Slack like old rope.
[00:50:14] Speaker C: Notice that the throat can be soft again.
[00:50:22] Speaker D: Just check that your jaw is loose.
Sinking throat and tongue are relaxed.
[00:50:36] Speaker C: And let this looseness and softness spread into your chest and into your diaphragm.
[00:50:47] Speaker D: And your belly and seat.
Upper legs, knees, lower legs, ankles all also loose, warm, soft.
And the feet and the toes.
So whole body at peace.
This whole body at rest.
Resting, really resting.
We might think of meditation as not really meditation.
Just coming back.
Just returning to a home that's always been here.
Just to touch it is intrinsically restful.
It requires nothing of us.
It's a home.
Home that in a way we never.
[00:52:28] Speaker C: Really left.
[00:52:31] Speaker D: But we might have thought we did.
We're just coming back, returning to a home that's been with us all along and is here right now.
Here, home.
Eyes may be open and lowered or closed this fine, either way, let yourself listen.
Notice if somehow the surroundings, they too are home.
As if we noticed now that our surroundings are also at home.
Just as they need to be, just as they are.
Let yourself listen.
Hearing the sounds of the world.
Is there some way in which all these sounds are arising just for you, just for you to experience them?
Almost like it's a private or intimate world around you, a world that you're closely connected with, sort of your world really at home here, resting.
They sometimes seem as if we've been bouncing around like a pinball in a machine.
And there's been a place waiting, waiting for us to roll back into right here.
And it requires nothing of you.
It loves you.
It's pleased to have you back.
And something in you is also pleased to be back.
Resting, resting.
And perhaps sensing that out of the rest, a lovely special kind of awareness emerges.
Sweet awareness, an awareness that lets everything arise just as it does.
Welcoming, welcoming. This moment just now.
Nothing need be different just now.
Just for now, your home.
So if I had a bell, I'd ding it right now.
[00:59:22] Speaker C: Ding.
[00:59:30] Speaker D: Just bring in just a little gratitude for our being able to sit together like this and meet like this and participate in this gathering just like this.
Okay.
[01:00:02] Speaker A: Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
I enjoyed meditating with you. I want to come. And now you're emeritus, but I would like to come and sit with you in the mountain cloud.
Zendo, do you still ever lead even as emeritus? You occasionally lead sittings there.
[01:00:29] Speaker C: Yes, yes, indeed. And it would be the hugest honor to have you come and lead us, if you ever were able to get out here.
[01:00:37] Speaker A: So you didn't move to a different Zen center. That's why you're just emeritus, so you don't have to be there every day or something.
[01:00:43] Speaker C: Yes, yes. And then there's two new teachers writing.
[01:00:47] Speaker A: More books, I presume.
[01:00:48] Speaker C: Yeah, well, that. But also I've been, you know, making this app.
[01:00:52] Speaker A: And you're more. Working more on that. Oh, good. Yes.
[01:00:56] Speaker C: And we also have a. I have a meditation program called Original Love as well.
[01:01:01] Speaker A: Oh.
[01:01:02] Speaker C: It sort of follows the.
[01:01:05] Speaker A: It's in the app. You mean, or you mean you have it as a retreat or something?
[01:01:10] Speaker C: Yeah, both ways. It's in the app. But we also occasionally have in person retreats, and we have Zoom gatherings, you know, usually one or two a month.
[01:01:21] Speaker A: Yes, yes. You know.
Yes, yes. The minute we sat meditating, why I mentioned Mark Epstein came in my mind.
[01:01:30] Speaker C: Ah, good. Yeah.
[01:01:31] Speaker A: Was when he met Ram Dass toward the end of Ram Dass's life in Maui, having been an undergraduate student of Richard Alpert in Harvard, like 50 years earlier.
And then Ram Dass said to him in his halting way, because after his stroke, you know, he said, so you're a psychiatrist now, huh? Sort of thing. And Mark said, yes. And so then Ramdas said, do you, after some pausing, because he was speaking slowly like that, he said, do you see your patience as already free?
He said. And then Mark affirmed that with a little hesitancy.
So that was what connected to our idea of the Buddha nature, even in the suffering person. And that's why I thought, but only came back to me when we were in a silent meditation. It was floating in my brain somewhere.
[01:02:32] Speaker C: Yes, that's. That's a beautiful way to put it, actually.
[01:02:36] Speaker A: That's really beautiful. My mind did, since I was welcoming my distracting thoughts under your guidance, I was then thinking about Adam and Eve and even God and the serpenthe four characters in that play. And I'm probably. Then I thought, well, maybe I shouldn't say, because you might have brought up that tableau in the book, which I missed because I didn't read every word yet. Did you mention it in the book?
[01:03:04] Speaker C: Actually, not directly. No, it's not.
[01:03:07] Speaker A: Oh, well, then let me share then. Then, if we're going to welcome everybody, then the serpent is like Kundalini, you know, the life force.
The force of life itself, right? Another bad guy, you know, got a cobra, gonna kill you. And he wants Eve to enjoy the apple. He nibbles on it himself in the tree. He lives there with apples in the tree. They grow lots of apples. So then she likes it and she wants to have. And then she loves Adam, she wants to feed him and he takes a bite and they all enjoy. And then God, as their parent, sees they're going to get into enjoyment, so they have the whole planet out of the Garden of Eden. And so then some grumpy patriarch later, who writes it down, makes it like he's banishing them, but actually, who wants to make love with the parent looking on, you know? So they go off to enjoy life with all their massive progeny and the whole thing, and God is happy to see them on their own, standing on 2ft, in love with each other and having beautiful apples to eat.
So that could make it all instead of this horrible original sin, but make it original love.
[01:04:27] Speaker C: Exactly. Exactly. That's a beautiful. I mean, aren't there earlier versions of that piece of mythology where it is more like that?
[01:04:36] Speaker A: I don't know.
[01:04:38] Speaker C: I think there are.
[01:04:41] Speaker A: Rabbinical scholars who go back into, not Gilgamesh, which is already patriarchal, and I think a little bit irritable even before that. Maybe they find something like that. I don't know. Exactly. That I don't know.
[01:04:54] Speaker C: Yes, I think I remember reading somewhere that it was borrowed by those patriarchs earlier story that they brought in and put their spin on it.
[01:05:05] Speaker A: Right, right. Well, speak up for God not to make him a bad guy.
[01:05:10] Speaker C: Yeah, I like that. That's beautiful.
[01:05:12] Speaker A: Because lately, thanks to the Avatamsaka sutra, you know, the flower gone in Chinese, you know, the ke gon, kegon gyo in Japanese, you know, I finally decided to give God a break, who I disliked from youth for his floods and his pills of salt and all kind of grumpy things that he does, I always consider, because he doesn't have a good woman doomed to permanent bachelorhood, he.
[01:05:44] Speaker C: Needs a shakti or something.
[01:05:46] Speaker A: Occasional visit of the shekinah, you know. So anyway, but I found out that the ten stage bodhisattva in the. In the 10th stage sutra, which is part of the. The Buddha garland sutra or the flower ornament sutra, they say the 10th stage bodhisattva, when they're in the exoteric thing where there might be many lifetimes as ten stage bodhisattvas, rather than get there, like in the immediate moment of the whatever, of the moment in the context of where there's a long history, evolutionary history, awaiting them they like to take birth as the Brahma, which in Buddha's era was the creator in the people who believed in a creator, which wasn't he, which he disagreed with. But he didn't say that he think that God didn't exist. He just said he wasn't to be blamed for everything. But anyway, they like to be the brahma of a particular world system, because as that they can do a lot of good for the human beings and for the other, and the other gods and the angels and animals and those things. And they can shape beautiful worlds for them. They can't create it all, and they don't because it's a cycle.
And they just co create with all the living beings, mental intersection of all the beings. So when I heard that, I thought, oh, okay. And he knows some people will project omnipotence on him and hate him when they have Holocaust like Elie Wiesel did, and others, and rightfully so, in a way, for allowing such awful things. If he was omnipotent, yes. But since he's not omnipotent, he's just very powerful. And we have our own karma, so to speak, and we can be our own stupidity. So I decided I would stop being mad at God.
And then I was so pleased because you know what? Some of my friend, from, my german friend sent me something from my guests from german Instagram. Is there such a thing? I don't know, but it's language. And there was Dalai Lama on that instagram and he said, got hist un Endlich's midkefu.
Und. No, he didn't know. Und. And then Unendlich is liber, meaning God is infinite, or endless compassion, mitiful and endless love.
[01:08:13] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:08:14] Speaker C: How nice.
Wow.
[01:08:17] Speaker A: Well, there's all over the place.
But I was pleased anyway, so.
[01:08:25] Speaker C: Oh, that's lovely. Yeah.
I mean, it's too bad really, that the, you know, the, it's become so problematic, really, the doctrines of Christianity, and soon.
[01:08:40] Speaker A: Because. Why? Because usually in 25 or maybe 5000 years of patriarchal, militaristic, militarized societies, the government's job with the collusion, usually, of the high priest is to terrorize the citizenry into being afraid of life, of the enemy, the animals, the germs, whatever the scarcity. And so that they think they need the king or queen or. And the high priest. So they distort the great Zen people, the enlightened people, the mystics or whatever, who have to go in hiding, and that's. Therefore they become mystics. They. They have to suppress them. And who realize the joy of everything and the original love, who realize original love. And they have to people the original terror. They have to terrorize their own citizen. So they control the recording of the wonderful teachings that the enlightened ones have been giving for centuries, including the shamans, probably, in many indigenous societies.
[01:09:48] Speaker C: Yes, yes, yes. Actually, I, you know, earlier, much earlier in my life, I was doing a PhD that I never finished on Homer. And I, you know, I started Greek.
I was only nine when I began learning ancient Greek. Yeah, we did Latin to do that.
[01:10:05] Speaker A: That's so wonderful. The aorist and all of that.
[01:10:08] Speaker C: You know, all that. The heiress, the.
[01:10:10] Speaker A: We have the Sanskrit. It's very close. My Sanskrit professor at Harvard, he used to say when he retired, he was going to really finally read, reread Aeschylus and everyone in Homer in the. In the original, because it's very similar to Sanskrit. And he had learned it as a child, but he then had led it. Ross, you know, in teaching Sanskrit, he was a very brilliant Sanskrit.
[01:10:32] Speaker C: Well, I read all of Homer in Greek, actually, in my early twenties, but, you know, and I love. I still love Homer, but nevertheless, you know, there's a view that basically the homeric cycle, it's all a sort of propaganda for the minimum, you know?
[01:10:50] Speaker A: On the other hand, I feel there's a redeeming factor.
In fact, the only course I ever was properly diligent of as an undergraduate at Harvard, until I came back from my buddhist sojourn, the only one I went to was a course called Singer of tales, taught by a person named Albert Lord, who studied oral epic poetry. It was all about oral epic poetry. And he was studying the yugoslav epic. Yes, he was showing how that illuminated Homer and also the Mahabharata in India and various other epics around in other societies. And what he highlighted, or what one came to understand, was that the building blocks of Homer glorifying the macho muscle beach heroes and their gory exploits, etcetera, and all the treachery and stealth and wild war are put together by the great poet in an overall thing that shows the futility of the whole thing.
Actually, it's a critique of the bards who used to sing for the kings to make them feel like, yes, my army helped them recruit troops, the propaganda side, you know, with achilles and things. But then when it's put together in the overall work of literature, they're showing that the whole thing is a complete pain in the ass.
And Ulysses gets home, and Agamemnon gets slaughtered after he gets home because. And he sacrifices his daughter to get a wind. I mean, really. And then his wife hates him by that time, and so on, so. And then Troy, which was a wonderful place for business, the silks of the. And the spices of Asia to come through the persian roads to the rather crude precina, drinking, fish eating greeks, was. Gets crushed and destroyed. And they have no. They don't have any of the luxuries of life, you know.
[01:12:41] Speaker C: Oh, that's a lovely view, actually, it's consistent with the great.
[01:12:45] Speaker A: The homeric thing takes the power of the poetical propagandists who work for kings and undercuts the whole thing. And then the mahabharata at the end, children of the victors are killed.
So their whole thing of. They were defending the family is just completely trashed, actually, by being righteous and winning the war.
[01:13:06] Speaker C: Yes. Yes. That's fascinating. The very first word of the Iliad in Greek is menim, which means mad rage. And it begins, men and Aedithea, Peleodo, Achilleus of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus, goddess, please sing. So it starts with the word rage. And the last book of the Iliad is when Achilles and King Priam meet, and Priam's son, Hector, has slain Achilles great love, patrocluse. And Achilles has killed Priam's son, Hector. And Priam comes as a beggar, an old man.
[01:13:49] Speaker A: Oh, really?
[01:13:50] Speaker C: Like a beggar, he comes. He sneaks into the greek camp to Achilles's tent to beg for his son's body so he can bury it with proper.
[01:14:00] Speaker A: Really? I forgot that completely.
[01:14:03] Speaker C: And they fall into each other's arms weeping, but they're lost and they forgive one another. So actually, that moment then, is the fulfillment of the first word. It's when Achilles's rage is finally ended, through forgiveness. So actually, in the end, it is a story of deep love and forgiveness.
[01:14:26] Speaker A: Yes. That's wonderful, but you have to get.
[01:14:28] Speaker C: Through, you know, 10,000 slaughter.
[01:14:31] Speaker A: Did you address that in original love?
[01:14:34] Speaker C: That is in. I think it's in there. I can't actually remember.
My mental capacity is not what it used to be. I think it's in there.
[01:14:44] Speaker A: I'm sure. Listen, I look forward to. You have another one on the ways.
[01:14:52] Speaker C: Actually, I write a lot of poetry. After a long hiatus. I'm writing poems again. My next book, I hope, will be a collection of poems, actually.
[01:15:01] Speaker A: Oh, wonderful. Wonderful. Well, Henry, it's been a real pleasure and I look forward to sitting with you. If I ever get to get to there, I will undoubtedly have to give a few dharma talks in some buddhist places. If I do get there ever, I get invited now and then, and I've just been very lazy. I don't like airports anymore, since COVID and since everything. But I look, if you ever come to Woodstock and we have a little retreat center called Menla that my wife created here as we were thinking of what to do in our emptiness, and someone gave us land and buildings and things, and we'd love it if you visit there. Maybe you come and teach there. If you ever go do seminars and things. We don't have as big an audience as Omega or Capallo, but we have a good audience, a very serious dharma people usually.
[01:15:50] Speaker C: Well, it would be. I'd love to come and I'd love to sit with you and learn from you more. I'm sure you have a boundless wealth of treasures to share, so I'd be honored either way. And if you want me to offer a little something of my own poultry offerings, I'd be happy to.
[01:16:08] Speaker A: I'd do that. Someday. I might invite you. We sometimes do these summits online, so invite you to participate in one of them sometime.
[01:16:16] Speaker C: Oh, that's very kind, but dedicating the.
[01:16:20] Speaker A: Merits to everyone, becoming enlightened as you and me as fast as possible to put an end to this nonsense, like Ukraine and Palestine and Israel and all 72 of them on the planet, still they say yes quickly come to an end by people realizing that life is to be lived joyfully. Thank you so much.
[01:16:40] Speaker C: Thank you so much. A real honor. Thank you.
[01:16:43] Speaker A: My honor. Honor is all mine.
[01:17:01] Speaker B: The Bob Thurman podcast is produced through Creative Commons no derivatives license. Please be sure to, like, share and repost on the your favorite social media platforms. And it's brought to you in part through the generous support of the Tibet House Us Menla membership community and listeners like you. To learn more about the benefits of Tibet House membership, please visit our
[email protected] comma menla.org and bobtherman.com dot Tashi delick. And thanks for tuning in.
