Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: It sounds like. Like that's what you just said, Ben, that. That it's sort of a feeling that you are the universe and. And being. I guess, as Heidegger would say and the existential philosopher Heidegger would say, being at home in the world in the sense that you are. You finally felt part of it in a. And. And. And were at peace with it. Is that. Am I completely off base? Am I extrapolating too much? Or is that. Is that what those experiences have been like for you guys?
As I know you, You've. You've done the work and been through the struggles. So I'm just wondering how you got where you are and how it feels as opposed to where you were before.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Being that. I'm heavily involved in the 12 step program.
The. The main crux. It's based in spirituality. It's based in having a higher power, but it's a God of your understanding. And I think that's critical.
And I think that does relate to what Henry's talking about. Taking pieces from these different traditions.
Now for myself, when I feel at one with God and my surroundings and with other people in my head, it's a Christian perspective.
And it's not that I believe my Christian perspective is superior, but because of the way I was raised, because of the karma that brought me up to this point, today, at least, I'm a Christian.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: So the Christian symbolism is. Is that just what it is for you? It's more your way of. Of modeling or symbolizing the spiritual process of redemption and, And. And the. The order of the universe as you understand it.
[00:01:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: And. And I can't explain it. I.
When. When I look around, I. I feel like God has placed literally every person walking by me. The garbage can, the snow, the blade of grass, the. The garbage on the ground that's blowing. He's. I feel like he's placed everything, including myself, exactly where it has to be in my nature, in my personal nature, not the external nature.
Christianity just resonates with me.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: It sounds like what you were describing.
[00:02:21] Speaker D: I think, too, there's a line and I just picked up the AA book.
William James talks about spiritual experiences of the educational variety and that they're not all, aha, moments of white light and the clouds part and all that. You know what I mean? That sometimes I think with my journey with dysmorphia and psychosis, when I look back, I wrote. I wrote an article on my experience with the body. You know what I mean? And when I look back, it all made sense, you know? What I mean, it's kind of in hindsight that, like, I had to go through that to get to this.
This feeling of the. This. To really feel that, like. Yeah, that. That extra sensitivity is a gift now that I can really breathe deeply and really, really feel safe in my body as a form of refuge and get deeper with my meditation. But I've also. I think there's also those moments where, you know, you're standing on a mountain range and you realize just how cool this world is. And there's. Or I've had moments of real suffering that have broken through. I had a. A breakup, you know what I mean? And I realized that, like, hey, this. This girl and me are not two, you know what I mean? This is. This is. She's a symbol that I've. That I'm. I'm hung up on it because it's me. It's a reflection of me. You know what I mean? And I've had about.
[00:03:35] Speaker C: Aha.
[00:03:35] Speaker D: Moments like that. That. So I think it can be both. I think it can be slower. Burn.
Educate. They call it the education, spiritual awakening of the educational variety where you kind of look back in hindsight and, hey, this was all pretty connected and this all kind of made sense in the end. Or you can get those. Those little hot shots of glimpses of like, enlightenment moments where it's like, wow, yeah, we're not two, you know, this is cool.
So that's my take is the sense of.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Of connection is that what you lose when you're suffering, that you gain when you. When you.
I don't know, when you. When you feel better about everything and you feel.
[00:04:14] Speaker D: That's. I mean, that's. The school of the Zen would believe that the sense of separate self.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:18] Speaker D: You know what I mean? And I'm a Zen Buddhist, you know what I mean? The sense of separation. And I would feel that in my body. Like, think about when you're suffering, what your body feels like.
[00:04:27] Speaker C: It's tense.
[00:04:28] Speaker D: The blood pressure is up. The lactic muscle, lactic AC in your muscles, it's. It feels. You can feel when you're. When you're dialed in, you can feel really loose and kind of one with the air around you. But when, when you're. When you're suffering, there's. There's this.
This course kind of. You know what I mean? You're. It's you against the world. And I. So I think that sense of separateness is. Is a. Is a theme you could definitely pull.
[00:04:53] Speaker A: And I just asked that because I at sat My. Well, I guess I, I may have said this on other discussions, but I guess the spiritual tradition philosophy that I feel maybe most at home with is something like the Advaita Vedanta tradition and Hinduism that, that you know who. That's main underlying theme, right, is that we are nature. We are all one ultimately. And we've. And it's. We are nature having taken on different forms. But our. What causes suffering is when we become so attached to these individual forms and these and all the individual forms that comprise existence and we, that we forget our homeness and that our oneness with, if you want to call it nature of the universe. And it just sounds like what you guys are saying would comport, would fit very well in that tradition. Meaning that your, your, your sense of, of. Of finding better grounding and peace has come through realizing this, this deep connection and being at home in the, in the universe, if you want to call it that. I. Is that fair?
[00:06:03] Speaker D: Yeah, I didn't even. I've never heard of that tradition and so much of what I believe already. You know what I mean? So that's again back to Henry's point about finding the, under the, the weaving thread and that lines these up. So that's cool.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I was, sorry I'm. There was so much. Oh geez. The, the comment on symbols.
Just to kind of go back a little bit getting into, you know, Henry's comments on nature.
The thing.
And maybe this has already been talked about and maybe you all have the same view, but in your own way.
The thing for me is being humble.
And I like the hierarchy that there is, you know, you could call it ultimate reality in certain circles. For me it's God. So God is, you know, is in charge and then I have to humble myself and be subordinate to him.
And also when I deal with people, you know, it translates to when I, when I deal with people I have to see the divinity in them and humble myself to them too. Which for me is, which for me is a struggle sometimes. You know, I have a master's degree, I worked at NASA, I was on a record label. Why are you like. You know, I have some old habits. The, the point is though, I have that in my head. But I'm trying to learn and, and the Christian faith that I've attached to is teaching me that humble yourself, you know. And so I'm working on that. But I do realize I can learn something from a 2 year old child to a 99 year old person. You know, every person I meet teaches me something all 1, 2.
Are there four other people in this room?
All of you have taught me something.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: Those sort of very Taoists kind of reversal. Paradoxical. He who humbles himself will be exalted. He who exalts himself will be humbled. He who seeks to gain his life must lose it. He who loses his life will find it.
The last shall be first and the first shall be last. I mean, I can think, right? There's so many of those. And I, and, and, and they, they all seem to point very much to what, what you're. What I hear you saying, I think Andy.
[00:08:44] Speaker E: So the.
I was talking to a Christian friend of mine who's been on other podcasts and we were talking about the Jesus prayer. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. And so I told him beautiful prayer. But I never say the last phrase.
It's enough to say, lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me.
And there's this interesting paradox.
I don't have any trouble knowing that there are powers greater than my individual self. I see that every day.
That doesn't mean I don't have agency.
If God made me, how can I be unworthy?
So it's like in the natural course of things, a mosquito can kill me. I can get encephalitis. If a particular mosquito carrying something bites me. In that instance, it's much more powerful than I am. So it's kind of relative.
Overdoing the sinner thing, overdoing the powerless thing is giving away the power that the universe has given everybody, every part of creation. You just can't take it to an extreme.
You're not the. As one of our Sufi teachers, I only know this by history because he, I never met him, but he would say you, you act like you're the, you're the whale excrement at the bottom of the ocean.
You're not, you know, so.
But that doesn't mean that you're the equivalent of God.
It means you're worthy, you have a role, you have agency.
There are some things that have more agency than you, others that have less.
And that can be relative. I can kill a mosquito or the mosquito can kill me.
And one of the things I learned in exploring shamanism is one of the major tenets that I heard right away is everything is a relationship, and it's not a one way street. There's a reciprocal relationship between me and everything else, including whatever we want to call God.
It's a give and take.
It's okay with me that most of the power is someplace else.
But there's a. There's a communication which really leads to some interesting stuff about karma. I was hoping we could get back to that. Ben and Joel and I can go around and around about this.
So I've also been studying the mystic Paul Brunson, I don't know if any. And he's pretty eclectic.
Probably one of his major influences was Ramana Maharshi, so the Hindu tradition. But he's.
He's pretty cool.
So I. I think of it more this way. But it's in the Sufi tradition, too. The universe has an intention. So Anaya Khan, the founder of the tradition I follow, he said something really provocative. Still drives me crazy.
He said, you know, when you're a kid, you think God is on a cloud and has a beard and blah, blah, blah, okay? But then you grow up and you realize, well, you know, it's. It's something else. And eventually you get to.
I'm paraphrasing. He didn't say this, but it's like, well, then you study physics and you realize, well, God must be energy.
And he says, yeah.
And then he had this sentence. He adds on to it, God is energy with a personality.
What the hell do you do with that?
And then he says, well, we all have personalities.
So if we have personalities, where do you think that came from?
Right. It's really interesting just that, you know, and I take it metaphorically, but where it helped is that whatever the universe is, and if you want to call it God, okay, it has a direction.
So the Sufis that this tradition I follow would say that the direction is the perfection of love, harmony and beauty, whatever that means, something we think of as good qualities. Right.
The form is not predetermined.
The direction is the impulse. The karmic impulse kind of is towards some creation that will be loving, harmonious and beautiful. What form that's going to take, that depends on the relationship between creation and the divine power.
That's where our free will comes in more provocatively. And this is where I was teasing Joel.
I don't think Westerners can get karma, but I'm not an Easterner, so I don't know.
And I was trying to look this up. I was hoping, you know, this, Richard, but I couldn't find it. I. I learned from the light. Anayat Khan, the son of Anayat Khan, he loved to say, the pull of the future is greater than the push of the past.
And then I was just studying something for the class I'm going to give. And he took that from a polymath, and I think the 13th century. And I can't find his name. I don't know if, you know, it begins with an E, I think.
But it didn't come from the Sufi. It came from. From.
[00:14:53] Speaker A: From a Christian mystic of some sort of.
[00:14:55] Speaker E: No, it wasn't a. It was a scientist. He was into everything. You know, one of those great philosophers who was a mathematician and a philosopher and whatever.
[00:15:05] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:15:05] Speaker E: So here's how I think of it.
There's a direction, and the universe is like a tractor beam in Star Trek.
We have free will and we can resonate with the universe's direction or we can go off half cocked, but there's a relationship.
Right. And the universe can take anything we do and try to bring it back, like a tractor beam, to be back in resonance with the direction towards something that'll be loving, harmonious and beautiful.
Or you take de Chardin's Omega Point. There's something we're heading toward that is pulling us that's different than karma from the past, pushing us in a direction.
[00:15:58] Speaker C: Right.
[00:15:58] Speaker E: So that philosopher, or the Sufi saying, there's a pull of the future.
So there. And what I loved about Velaya, he was fond of saying, it's not either or. It's. And there's karma, there's natural consequences, you know, you reap what you sow. Yes.
Also, there is just plain luck happenstance.
And there's a pull, there's a push, there's a pull, and there's just plain luck.
And the trust that a lot of us talk about, especially the shamans, but we all say, or the idea, which I don't like the way it's phrased, you know, everything is perfect the way it should be.
That phrase drives me nuts.
The way I interpret it, that makes me. My heart and mind feel a little bit better, is the universe is powerful enough that it can take whatever something is and pull it back in resonance. It's that powerful.
So, yeah, there are karmic influences and there are times when the divine, through Christian grace.
I don't know another word you can use whatever word you want that says, eh, right, Yeah, I don't care. I'm pulling you. I always make fun of St. Paul. He was karmically influenced to do blah, blah, blah, and God said, I'm gonna knock you off your horse.
And all of a sudden, how'd that happen?
You know, so you can have a circular argument and say, oh, that's karma. Karma too. And all of that. I think it's Just a fascinating dance.
It's a little bit of this, a little bit of this, it's a little bit of this.
And yeah, there's an interplay of sometimes this is more powerful, that's more powerful. And there's an ultimate power that I know is greater than anything else in creation that I know of or, or can intuit.
But we have agency and the evolution is towards creation that has greater and greater agency that will help create a form that will embody the intention of the universe.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: So, and I'd love to hear you and, and Joel argue. That would be really kind of cool.
[00:18:45] Speaker E: But you can, you can run the next podcast and you can do it.
[00:18:49] Speaker A: So, so the, the, the you, the, the.
The situation is such that we are the universe. Universe. We are aspects of the universe.
We, the universe though, knows where it's going because it has a telos, it has a direction, but we also have free will. So it's partly discovering where it's going through our active choices in the present.
So where the universe helping to discover itself in each one of individuals.
Okay, so that sounds a lot like what Joel would say. I want, I want to hear Joel tell Henry why he's full of crap. And then you guys, one thing lead to another.
[00:19:34] Speaker E: On that note, I think we're almost out of time.
[00:19:37] Speaker C: Actually, Henry, we're just beginning. It's called part two.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: So you were talking, so Henry was talking about how we'll never figure it out. And I mean, just take a look at physics now.
You know, we're making progress and then all of a sudden the universe is accelerating and there's dark energy, there's dark matter. We did. We do not know what it is. We can only infer that it exists.
So that's going to be. Yeah, so we'll be grappling with that for the next, what, 100 years? Thousand years, who knows?
[00:20:17] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. And I was reminded of David Baum. Everybody's probably familiar with you. You write his notion of the implicit wholeness in his famous book Wholeness in the Implicate Order about that, that he was as, as you know, quantum physicists go, he was of the what they called hidden variable school, as opposed to say, Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation or like the Many worlds interpretation, which is out there. I always like David Bohm, though, because he had this very Advaita Vedanta esque conception of the physical universe where you have what he called the,
[00:21:03] Speaker E: the.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: What does he call it? The explicate order of the, of. Of physical reality, which is what we, what is tangible, what can tangibly be understood and grappled with by the physical sciences. And then what he called. And correct me if I'm not doing this justice, guys, and then what he called the implicate order, which it, which. In which the explicate order is unfolded in and comes from the implicate order. And that implicate order of the very fundamental deep levels, say laws of physics and quantum information that, that the physical universe springs from. And then beneath that, there's what he called the super implicate order, which is.
And he didn't talk much about that.
[00:21:46] Speaker D: Right.
[00:21:46] Speaker A: He talked about the implicate and the explicate. But there is also this notion, and that's what really fascinates me about the super implicate order, which kind of reminds me of what he. Whatever Duke, call it, what you will. Sufi God or Hindu Brahman or you know, the Dao or you know, of Taoism that transcends yin and yang. But you can't. It can't be named.
It's an order that transcends anything that we can start putting labels on. But it is the potentiality, maybe you call it energy in physics. The potentiality from which what we see as physically possible emerges. But isn't that itself? So, I don't know, I just reminded.
[00:22:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, well, well, that ties, ties in, I believe, to the. To the wave function.
The wave function. You know, there's all this potential.
[00:22:38] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: The elect, the. The. The electron can be anywhere in the universe, but then when you actually examine it, it materializes it in a specific time and location.
[00:22:51] Speaker A: Excellent. Yeah, I'd say that's a. That's another great quantum physics parallel, isn't it?
[00:22:56] Speaker C: Yeah,
[00:22:59] Speaker A: I don't know. It just remind. When you mentioned physics.
[00:23:01] Speaker D: I don't know.
[00:23:02] Speaker A: More interested in hearing what, What Joel has to say about karma that disagrees with you.
[00:23:07] Speaker C: Well, I mean, fundamentally this is just. And I mean, I mean all honor and respect to Henry is teaching what he offers. He's guided many great, great wisdom and understanding the fundamental differences that I feel that we are in an unseen field.
The unseen field is shunyata, is emptiness.
So when we talk about a garden in the unseen field, the field is the garden and the garden is emptiness. But the garden manifests in form as the garden.
And I is a part in both the totality of shunyata, of emptiness. There's nowhere that I exist in time and space, and yet I am here in time and space. The totality of that is that my actions in time and space generate in the unseen realm, karmas.
My every action, thought and speech, every intention that I have.
The Zohar says this, Hinduism, Buddhism, I'll say this, that even now, as I generate loving kindness for all beings without thought and without want of reward, whether I do or do not think of reward or wanting, the exact measure returns to me like in kind, at the right time, dictated by the universe. So if I think about loving kindness for all beings with a, with a specific goal and outcome that returns to me like in kind, the, the goal and the outcome translated back to me perfectly at a time in the future, it's a seed of karma. If I think of loving kindness for all beings with no goal, no thought, then that iteration, that specific iteration returns to me like in kind, in the future.
The universe is the ascriber, the accountant. You get God is the great accountant God. And it's not, there's no effort in it for God. God's God only utilizes it for highest good, that at the right time, the rudeness that I have expressed or the harm that I have expressed, God will utilize that constructively at the best time, as God knows. And so every moment we are generating karma, every moment we are generating the experiences of our future without even. I mean, this is the whole vital notion of zazen or meditation yoga, vital practices to awaken to the reality that it's not just I'm being kind to you five or being rude to you five, I'm. I'm shaping my experience in future incarnations. And maybe this incarnation that is not noble, whether it's this incarnation or future incarnations. But let me assure you that I'm shaping the quality of my life and lessons. I am calling forth my own lessons with the generative intention, thought, action and speech that I issue each moment.
So I'm. I'm. The bridge I walk upon is the bridge I build.
It cannot be another way. And this is the deepest mystical esoteric teachings of all traditions.
If you get in the mystical traditions of Christianity, what is Jesus talking about? For what? What is? What is? As you, so so shall you reap.
As you sow your intention, thought, action and speech, you will reap the exact intention, thought, action, speech. In Judaism, it's known as measure for measure. The Zohar says that everything we put out in the universe is reflected back to us exactly in the measure that we offer it.
This is so vital to understand why loving kindness, why chesed, why kindness is highest wisdom, because this is what we will experience for ourselves. It's not just that we're benefiting our community through kindness, we're also shaping our own future. So someone who has a very strong generative force of loving kindness in previous incarnations and falls into a condition like I have of great suffering, I in part could intuitively attribute my health now, my ability to pull out of insanely traumatic experiences, great difficulty, the generative force of loving kindness in previous incarnations, my own heart has brought me to the fruition of health now by God's attributing good conditions and good circumstances, once I learned the lessons of the suffering, it's my own generative force of loving kindness for everything that has brought me to health. And so I don't say that because I should have accolades for loving kindness by default. Nobody should have accolades for loving kindness because it should be as ubiquitous as air and dirt in sky and water. We shouldn't even have to mention it. We should all just be kind because it's the only, ultimately the. The only lasting thing here.
If you look at creation itself, what is it? It is kindness. It is a gift. God has given us this experience, so when we want to mirror him, we're in his likeness and image. When we want to mirror God or. Or be in his image, we are kind because God is kind.
But I know Henry just has a different take on it. And I don't know that if Henry and I were to talk for a long time, we would probably resonate at very similar places with both seeing and knowing and understanding that the other is absolutely correct.
[00:29:02] Speaker A: What you guys are saying both resonate with me harmoniously. I don't. I don't hear any disagree point of disagreement there, but maybe it tends to
[00:29:11] Speaker E: come up the way. The way we interpret reincarnation.
But that's. That's for another discussion. Yeah, there's a twist to that that, that I find really helpful, but it's hard to. Yeah, we're gonna have to wrap up pretty soon, right?
[00:29:26] Speaker C: By wrap up, Henry means we just met the quarter mark of this podcast.
Right. And we should be done by 9 o'.
[00:29:34] Speaker E: Clock.
[00:29:34] Speaker C: Henry, don't worry, I know you.
[00:29:37] Speaker E: Before we started the recording, you had asked us why, what do you want?
Remember?
[00:29:44] Speaker C: Yeah, I do.
[00:29:45] Speaker E: And I had a flash. The.
It isn't the. It isn't just the content, it's the process.
What does spirituality in action mean to you? But it really made me think about what we're doing.
A loosely knit group of people that don't really have a formal membership in something, but really get excited about what's, what's meaningful and, and want to bring that in and support each other that way.
[00:30:22] Speaker C: So I guess, yeah. And wrapping up, I'm just wondering, close out with you, and then I'll close out. But, you know, Rich or Andy or Ben, thoughts or reflections, the final things you like to share or say, ideas for the future.
What arises for you, Rich, what arises for you.
[00:30:40] Speaker A: I just, you know, what Henry said, you know, is absolutely true.
Spiritual path for me has always been a very solitary exercise and kind of a lonely one at times. And the work, and I really mean, I can't stress enough that these, the work you guys do in general, in general, with all the projects and initiatives you have is incredible. It's, it's exactly what I think, you know, the spiritual landscape needs and the spiritual seekers need to find kindred souls. I, it's, I know for me, it's so important. Every one of these is absolutely invaluable to me. As soon as you guys start talking, it generates so many questions that I just can't, you know, I, I, I, I only asked about, you know, 5% of what I wanted to, and, and, and meeting Annie and Ben. It was great meeting you guys. I mean, what you should. Was fantastic. So thank you.
[00:31:34] Speaker C: Yeah. And, Rich, I just want to let you know, I, I don't, I can't speak for Ben and Annie because of their newer, but I know both Henry and I, and you feel like we, we all talk too much. Like, I feel like I, I have to tap out because I, I, you know, I have to be cognizant that I, I have a tendency to.
[00:31:53] Speaker D: Your, your questions were great. They really moved us forward. I wouldn't feel bad at all. No, I, I think they were, they're great.
[00:31:59] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:32:00] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:32:00] Speaker C: Ben, he, he does this every podcast. He corners people to elicit their highest wisdom.
Like, that's amazing.
But he's the facilitator for it, but he doesn't recognize it, you know?
[00:32:14] Speaker D: Yeah, no, that was, it was great.
[00:32:16] Speaker C: But, Ben, go ahead.
[00:32:17] Speaker D: I didn't get to speak much on karma, and I, I was really liking the reflection you both had a minute ago. But I was thinking you're talking a lot about collective karma, which is something I haven't thought or learned much about. But I think of individual karma and back to the I'm not worthy or the opposite of. He who exalts himself will be humbled. I think having an identity, you know what I mean? Having a, a major sense of self that is separate from others again. To back to that.
You know, we would say the.
In math, 7 and negative 7 still have a value of 7. You, you. If, if you're truly humble, you're at an even point. And when, when you can get there, I think when you can realize that you're not separate, then there is no major identity. You can be free of your karmic obstructions more so, I mean, we've all got our, our habit patterns and everything. And you can be more in line with the universe's energy and the natural loving kindness and the natural gratitude when you can, when you can truly reach that real humility where you're, where you're no better or no worse, you. You can be free of your habit forces and be more spontaneous, more from the hara, more from the heart and just resonate more with that natural love and kindness that is kind of the universe's will. That's, that's my take on individual karma, but I think it gets into the collective karma as you guys touched on wonderfully as well.
[00:33:49] Speaker C: Beautiful, Andy.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks, Ben. I, I learned a lot today and I just wanted to say I appreciate Ben just because of our similar, you know, the, Our. Our similar background, so. And the. Yeah, so. But I appreciate everyone that was here and thanks for allowing me to be a part of it.
[00:34:13] Speaker C: Of course. Andy, Ben, Rich. You know, just for a moment, could I just say, you know, Ben, you, Ben and Andy haven't been on these podcasts before, but Ben, we are long time travelers on.
I don't know what you'd call. But just walking, I guess, walking, walking through life.
We've been fellow travelers and Andy and I also both located in Buffalo, really appreciate both your hearts, the genuine quality, the purity, your heart.
[00:34:43] Speaker B: Thank you. That helps a lot. You know, I've, I'm still trying to get balanced and I, I love the comment about 7 and negative 7 and someone else mentioned the balance.
I'm working on it. And I'm early. I'm. I'm still early in my recovery.
[00:35:02] Speaker C: Yeah, well, I mean, regardless of your early or late, Andy, these states of recovery or non recovery, I mean they're important for your health and quality of life. But deeper than the recovery or non recovery is a quality of heart that always shines through.
Henry, final thoughts?
[00:35:18] Speaker A: Reflections?
[00:35:19] Speaker E: No, I shared my thoughts about this being like a cafe that I really enjoy being part of. And one last thing, the Sufis say that the best interaction is done in the silence.
[00:35:34] Speaker C: And so I just want to thank everyone, Rich and Andy, Ben and Henry, again, this is a collaboration between Alchemical Dialogues Podcast and Unraveling Religion Podcast. Henry and I have been at this for a little while now, and you know, it deepens as time goes, and I'm very grateful for this time and place. But I wanted to close out, actually with a Zen koan.
Po asked, what is the overall meaning of the Buddhist teaching?
The master said, don't commit any evils, practice the many virtues.
Poe said, even a three year old child could say this.
The master said, though a three year old child can say it, an 80 year old man cannot put it into practice.
Poe then bowed and departed.
So wherever that leaves you, in whatever ways that you can cultivate your own deepest nurturance of self may be found for each of us.
