This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Mediation: Pilgrimage of The Breath

Introduction

Welcome everyone, all of you here in person. It is delightful to have you, and it still feels very special to have people together and meditating, as I've been alone here for so long. So thank you for being here, and practicing in community. And those of you who are on YouTube watching, welcome as well. You haven't been forgotten even with the people here in the room, and I appreciate seeing the greetings in the chat. And perhaps on YouTube, if you logged on a little bit early, you saw people kind of walking in, past the camera. Hopefully, that just makes you delighted to see that there's more life here at IMC than there has been.

It feels kind of peaceful in here. It's a little bit more peaceful for me, which I hadn't thought about before, but it is a little more peaceful having people here to meditate than to have... I don't know if you ever saw the shots of the light umbrellas I have here and different paraphernalia and stuff. Somehow it feels very nice to be here with all of you, so thank you.

Meditation is so many different things for different people, and I certainly don't want to narrow it to any one thing. I think it's many things for each person over a lifetime of practice. Meditation has different functions, different meanings; it expresses different things, it realizes different things. It's a wonderful, varied kind of thing. Even though it might look similar—just sitting quietly with the eyes closed—the range of things that it can be about is quite broad, wide, and wonderful. I don't want to narrow it to one thing only, but today my feeling a little bit about meditation is that I'm associating it with being on pilgrimage, a sacred pilgrimage.

You know, in the old days they would walk on pilgrimages. You can still do that and go to some pilgrimage sites around the world. In Kyushu, Ireland, and Japan, they have pilgrimage routes, and in Spain, they have the El Camino and different things. The place we're walking is in our own body and mind. Sometimes I've thought that the rhythm of the breath, the breathing as we breathe, is kind of like the rhythm of walking. In the time of the Buddha, that was the only means of transportation, except for a few very rare, wealthy people who had chariots or something. But the Buddha walked. He walked and walked and walked across the plains of India, at a time when there was no asphalt, no electricity, and no cars.

Something happens in the rhythm of walking—the simplicity, the groundedness of it—that I think connects people to their bodies, connects people to their environment, and connects people to the present moment. So for meditation, the rhythm of the walking, the pilgrimage is done partly with the breathing, just the rhythm and the steadiness.

We're kind of lucky that for most of us—unless you have a pacemaker or something—we're just sitting quietly with the natural material of life, just like the Buddha did when he sat and closed his eyes. Sitting with the breathing is the same as the Buddha's; the sensations of the body are probably very similar. It's the same pilgrimage route, the same sacred ground that we're going through. And that's the same as it was before there was traffic and cars and electricity and the complications of life. It's a connection to something that's... you know, it's probably the wrong word to use, but it's a word that's kind of in my heart: it's something primordial that we connect to here in this pilgrimage of sitting and being with the moment.

If that connotation is nice for you, you might think of this next sitting as a pilgrimage. If it's not nice for you, then you are more than welcome to just let go of it.

Guided Meditation

Assume a posture that respects this pilgrimage we're on. A posture that respects this entering into a sacred area, a sacred ground. Entering into the domain where the Buddha traveled in his meditation. Maybe lower your gaze, relax the focus of your eyes, and if it's comfortable for you, gently close your eyes.

To establish yourself here in this primordial world of our body and breathing, to be reminded of it, you might take a few long, slow, deep breaths. Breathe deep enough so that it's a conscious engagement with breathing. Let the exhale be long enough that there is a conscious engagement with releasing, letting go, and settling in.

Then let your breathing return to normal. Part of the art of relaxing at the beginning of meditation is to relax so that the breathing is a little bit more easeful, or so that you can connect more to your breathing.

Relax the muscles of your face. Soften the shoulders. Especially when relaxing the shoulders, if they relax, you're going to be relaxing into the chest and the breathing. Relax the belly. Do not try too hard at all, just lightly. But there is an art to relaxing in the belly both on the inhale and the exhale. The diaphragm does the work, and the belly stays relaxed.

Maybe you've entered into some sacred space, a special place, and it was natural for your mind to become more calm, more quiet in the stillness and peacefulness of the place, out of respect for the place.

And so, to enter into this body of yours here as the pilgrim land of the pilgrimage, the breathing—the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out—is how you walk across this land, or through this land. One inhale at a time. One exhale at a time.

Perhaps have no more ambition with your breathing than to be present for the next inhale, the current exhale. There is no need to measure your success by stringing together many breaths in a row in mindfulness. Just be fully present for this step, this breath here. Quiet. Allowing the breathing to carry you, allowing the breathing to do you, rather than you doing the breathing.

Reflections

Then, as we come to the end of this sitting, one of the gifts you can bring to the world is whatever inner peace you have. And if you have no inner peace, one of the gifts you can give the world is the practice you do to find that peace, to connect to it. It's one of the great noble endeavors, this practice to find that peace.

May we do that not just for our own sake; may we do it to contribute to the welfare and well-being of this world. To help other people be able to find their peace, or to help others feel peaceful and unthreatened as they go through their life. Peace is a precious commodity.

Through this practice that we do, may the goodness of it spread out into the world. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free.

Thank you.

The Buddha as The Four Heavenly Messangers

What's been in my heart and my mind lately is the story of the last days of the Buddha's life. There's a text called the Mahaparinibbana Sutta^[1], which is the longest sutta, the longest discourse, the longest kind of text from this early tradition that is also unique in being a travelogue. It describes the travels that the Buddha did in the last time period of his life. It is also set up to be—maybe because the Buddha knew he was dying, as he was old—a way to prepare his community for his departure and his absence. He was giving his last teachings and his last instructions at this crucial point. But also, you get to see this man walking across India and how he engages with his sickness, old age, death, and dying. I think it's quite inspiring to see the conscious, careful, considerate way in which he went about his last period of time.

So I wanted to share that and talk a little bit about it. The story of the last days of the Buddha's life—last days, last months, the text itself might span somewhere between six and nine months of time—kind of bookends his path of practice. In this text, he refers to how he started his practice more than 50 years before when he was 29, and now he's about 80.

There is a kind of myth, most likely, about the beginning of the Buddha's path. He started when he was 29. What brought him at that ripe age to engage in spiritual practice and set out to seek some solution to his suffering?

The classic myth is that he was kind of a prisoner of the palace until that age. Somehow, his father wanted to protect him from the sufferings of the world and kept him within the palace walls. He had different palaces that he moved between, but he was protected from seeing some of the challenges that people live under. I can imagine that if probably any of us lived that kind of way—cooped up in a wealthy suburb, growing up with walls around the compound—there would probably be some frustration, some challenge, some feeling like this is not life, this is not that connected. There would be some kind of restlessness and maybe even built-up pressure, and that takes the form of the Buddha then jumping over the wall and sneaking out.

They say he snuck out four times, and each time he saw a different one of what's been called the Heavenly Messengers. When I was 10 or 11, I was in Nepal, in Kathmandu. Kathmandu was a pretty simple city or town when I was there in 1965. I went back 20 years later. I don't think there were any asphalted roads when I was there. In the dirt road in front of the palace where the king lived, it was the first time I saw a body, the body of a child who had died being carried down to the river to be burnt. I can imagine it. The Buddha saw these Heavenly Messengers.

On his first trip out, he saw someone who was sick. It says that he never knew anybody was sick before, who was really sick with something, and so he was shocked. He was told, "This is the nature of life, this is what happens to people." The next time he went out, he saw an old person. That shocked him because he had lived such a protected life, right? And he was told, "This is what happens if you're lucky enough, you get old." The next time he went out, he saw what I saw when I was 11: he saw someone who was dead. He was told that's what happens.

The fourth time he went out, he saw an ascetic, a spiritual seeker, a renunciant. The renunciant was just walking through town very peacefully, and he had never seen anybody who embodied such peace. Something about the renunciant got his attention, indicating how that's possible in this world of sickness, old age, and death. In this world of turmoil, of restlessness, and this pressure—this deep, deep need that he had from being so cooped up—there was a solution. There was a way out. There was another way, another approach to life. So he saw these Four Heavenly Messengers, and that sparked him to actually leave his palace life, to jump over the wall a fifth time, and to go off to become a renunciant himself, a contemplative.

Which he did for the next 50-plus years of his life. At some point, he found a solution to his suffering, he became enlightened, and then he taught. Then he comes to the end of his life, and there's a wonderful parallel or a repeating of the same thing. Sickness, all these Heavenly Messengers, but this time he is the Heavenly Messenger. The story depicts him as being an old person, depicts him as being repeatedly sick in these last days of his life, and depicts him as dying. And he's the renunciant, he's the peaceful one.

He's the messenger of what's possible in this life, that we can resolve our suffering and become a messenger of peace, a teacher of peace, an embodiment of peace. It's a wonderful completion to have that at the end of his life, that he becomes these Heavenly Messengers. We become the Dharma. The Dharma is not just something to treat as an external thing we tap into periodically; it's possible to become it in a very profound way.

When he had started off practicing, whatever it was he was feeling as a young man when he was 29 that made him feel he had to leave the palace, leave his marriage, and his family even. What that pressure was like inside of him, we get a little bit more sense of this from a text which is probably closer to what actually happened to him than the myth of going out and seeing the Heavenly Messengers. He is talking about what he was feeling before he became enlightened, describing his distress. Here he is, not enlightened yet, he hasn't discovered his peace yet. He's a distressed young man:

Violence gives birth to fear. Just look at people and their quarrels. I will speak of my dismay, And the way that I was shaken.

Seeing people thrashing about like fish in little water, And seeing them feuding with each other, I became afraid.

The world is completely without a core. Everywhere things are changing. I felt discontent at seeing only conflict to the very end.

Then I saw an arrow here, hard to see, embedded in the heart. Pierced by this arrow, they dash about in all directions. When the arrow is pulled out, they don't run and they don't sink.

Then there is one more verse I want to read that captures the results of pulling out the arrow, giving the instruction he gives for others:

What was before, let it wither away. What will be later, do nothing with it. Not grasping what's in between, you'll live at peace.

So don't be too caught up in the past or the future, live here. This is where the peace is to be found.

In this text, the story of his last days, some of what he wrote there is still true, and you kind of have to read a little bit into the text, and some of it's pretty explicit. The time as he was dying is changing, the world that he knew is radically changing. And you know, if you're old enough, that's what you see sometimes. But some of the challenges that we have in our modern times were challenges that they had back then. It isn't like our challenge is just to have a little bit different technology that goes with it, but human challenges are so similar. Back then, the Buddha had to live with this as well.

The text opens with a king. The Buddha is living in the town for the time being where the king lives, and the king sends his messenger, his minister to the Buddha with instructions that he wants to check in with the Buddha about how good an idea it is for him to attack his neighboring country. That's how it begins, war is afoot. Now the king who wants to go attack his neighboring country, he killed his own father who was a friend of the Buddha, and they'd spent many decades in contact with each other. So that represents that things were changing and not what they had been for the Buddha. The other king who's even closer to him, who lived further to the north, he also had been usurped by his son just in the last year or so of the Buddha's life and was sent into exile and died in exile. And it's possibly why the Buddha was way down near Rajgir^[2] in India, about 170 to 180 miles from where he was going to die from his home country. So there was all this political turmoil going on in this time, and war was afoot. There are other legends that during that last year of the Buddha's life, his own home country was attacked. First attacked and repelled, and then attacked and many people were killed.

So that's the background. The Buddha is starting to walk from Rajgir north towards his home country. He's an 80-year-old man, and he's walking across the plains of India. The distance in some ways is not so great, he ends up walking about 180 miles, but he takes about six to nine months to do that. He stops for the Rains Retreats along the way, and he stops many places along the way. I think someone who is relatively fit could probably do that walk in three weeks. So he's taking his time, he's not in a hurry. I just love this idea that he's not in a hurry. Maybe because he's old and tired and sick and creaky that maybe he has to walk really slow and take his time and rest a lot. One of the repeated refrains in this last text is the Buddha telling his fellow monks who are traveling with him, "I'm tired, let's go sit down. I'm tired, I need to lay down." I don't think you see that almost anywhere else in the suttas, but this happens repeatedly as a man who needs to rest.

So he starts heading north and comes across more evidence of war that is about to happen between these two countries that he spent a good part of his adult life visiting and traveling through and teaching. And he goes a little bit further and he learns that of his two main, most senior disciples, Sariputta and Moggallana^[3], Sariputta has died. And then he learns that Moggallana, his other senior disciple, had been killed. So things are changing, and this is what he's living in. The sense I get from the text is he's just walking peacefully, calmly, steadily. He's not affected by this. He certainly knows it, but somehow his peace is more powerful than what's happening around him. And from some of the things he says, it's like life around him isn't any different than what can be expected. So he's not fighting it or surprised by it, he's just walking peacefully, calmly, living his life, doing his final teaching that he has to do as he goes along. But in it, he's the Heavenly Messenger.

He stopped at some point for what's called the Rains Retreat, a three to four-month period where monastics are staying put in one place, supposed to be during the monsoon season. During the rains, he was attacked by a severe sickness with sharp pains as if he were about to die. But he endured all this mindfully, clearly aware, and without complaining. He thought, "It is not fitting that I should attain final Nibbana^[4] without addressing my followers and taking leave of the order of monks. I must hold this disease in check by energy and apply myself to the force of life."

It's a powerful statement that, you know, you couldn't go down to the local doctor and get some medicine to pump him up or keep him going and not feel pain, there wasn't such a thing. So he had to apply himself in practice and energy and keep his life force going, not to let it go out. I've heard that there are people who come to a juncture when they get old or sick where you can almost feel the choice between keeping the life energy going and letting it dissipate and move into death. So he decided to stay alive, he had still more work to do.

When he gets better from his sickness, his main attendant, a monk named Ananda^[5], came to him and said, "I have seen the Buddha in comfort, and I've seen you patiently enduring when you're sick. And when I saw you this way, sick, my body was like a drunkard's. I lost my bearings, and things were unclear to me because of the Buddha's sickness. The only thing that was of some comfort to me was the thought, the Buddha will not attain final Nibbana until he has made some statement about the order of monks."

So the last instructions, you know. But here again, everything's falling apart. His senior disciple says he kind of lost it when the Buddha was dying. So the Buddha answers this about the final statement to the order of monks:

"But Ananda, what does the order of monastics expect of me? I have taught the Dhamma making no inner or outer meaning..." Meaning no inner esoteric teachings that are secret in the public teachings. "I've made no distinction between inner and outer or secret or special teaching, and I have no teacher's fist in respect to teachings." Teacher's fist apparently is that you hold things hidden in your fist and you only give it to people if they do something. Apparently, that was something people would do. There were other religions at the time of the Buddha where there were clearly secret doctrines only taught to some people, it never could be shared with other people. So that's not his way.

And then he says, it's interesting, "If there is anyone who thinks I shall take charge of the monastic order, or that the monastic order should refer to me, let him make some statement about the order, let him do what he does. But the Buddha doesn't think in that way. So why should I make a statement about the monastic order?" I think he's saying he's not assigning anyone to be the successor. There's no one who's going to be the leader of it.

And then he goes on with this very touching description of the Buddha being old:

"Ananda, I am now old, worn out, venerable, one who has traversed life's path. I've reached the term of life which is 80. Just as an old cart is made to go by being held together by straps, so my body is kept going by being strapped up. It's only when I withdraw my attention from outward signs, from outward experiences of the world, and by the cessation of certain feelings, quieting down of certain feelings, and I enter into deep concentrated meditation called the signless^[6], that my body knows comfort."

Remember, there's no pain medication back then, right? So who knows what kind of physical pain he had. But he had this powerful mind of meditation that he had the ability to drop into, and so he was able to find his peace and comfort there and maybe refresh there. Remember he was trying to keep his life force going, I suspect that this deep meditation is part of what helped that continue.

And then he gave one of the most important last teachings of his teaching career. Given that we're all, you know, going to get sick, old, and die^[7] someday, or will become at least one of the Heavenly Messengers, at least one, and some of you'll probably be two, some three. And hopefully, some of you may be the last one, the last Heavenly Messenger, the person who walks peacefully in this world. The Buddha said:

"Therefore, you should live as islands unto yourselves, being your own refuge, with no one else as your refuge. With the Dhamma as an island, with the Dhamma as your refuge, with no other refuge. And how does one live as an island unto oneself, with no other refuge? Here, a person abides contemplating the body as body, earnestly, clearly aware, mindful, and having put away all hankering and fretting for the world. And likewise with regard to feelings, mind, and mind objects. This is how a person lives as an island unto oneself, with oneself as one's only refuge."

So this is what he gives. His mindfulness practice, Four Foundations of Mindfulness. The last thing the Buddha gives is not a doctrine, but rather a teaching about practice, instructions for practice. And this he repeats in different ways as he goes along here, that practice is what he's interested in.

So he has another place where he teaches:

"Those matters which I have discovered and proclaimed should be thoroughly learnt by you, practiced, developed, and cultivated, so this holy life may endure for a long time, that it may be for the benefit and happiness of many people, living out of care for the world, for the benefit and happiness of gods and humans."

So this is a powerful statement where he's talking about this is what he discovered: "I'm going to tell you what I discovered, and you should take this in and learn this well. But not only for your own sake, but for the welfare and happiness of others." It's going to be a universal benefit for the world. What a wonderful thing to be dedicated to. So he's going to tell you what he discovered, and what he says are practices. He gives a list of practices that he discovered. Again, practice is what's important for him. The list is the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, the Four Right Efforts, the Four Roads to Power, the Five Spiritual Faculties, the Five Mental Powers, the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, and the Noble Eightfold Path.

So that's quite a list, but what I wanted to emphasize is here at the end of his life, he's emphasizing practice. And you'll see he comes back to that again a little bit later.

So he's going along walking north slowly, resting along the way. At some point, he is invited to a meal by a local blacksmith who provides him with some local food that we don't know exactly what it was. There's a lot of scholarship around trying to figure out what food this is, but it's either some kind of mushroom, it's called "pig's delight"^[8], so it's either the mushrooms that pigs like, or it's some pork dish. We don't know, but probably the most likely thing is some kind of mushroom that apparently is maybe poisonous or something.

So after having a meal with the blacksmith, the Buddha was attacked by a severe sickness with bloody diarrhea and with sharp pains as if he were about to die. But he endured all this mindfully and clearly aware and without complaint. Here we have the image we have on the altar here of the Buddha, which is quite common, is the Buddha is always well-poised and healthy and young, an embodiment of the ideal. Sometimes we project this ideal spiritual perfection to the Buddha, like certainly he just floated in a cloud and was easy and light and nice and comfortable all the way to his death. But his description: old, his body creaking and held together with straps, and he had a bad back. Somewhere else he described himself as hunched over. We think it's upright and dignified, but he himself described himself as hunched over in his old age.

It's very human. It's almost like we can feel ourselves, see ourselves in here. The world's falling apart around him, his disciples are dying, he's sick and old, and he's the Heavenly Messenger for peace. He's calm, he's mindful, he's steady, he has a practice, he's still teaching, he's still motivated. And he keeps walking on his pilgrimage going north.

At some point, he crosses a river and comes to a sal grove. The sal trees are majestic trees of northern India, they're kind of like the redwood trees of India. It's apparently quite beautiful and tall. He came to this grove and he said, "Prepare a bed between two sal trees with my head to the north." Saying one more time, "I'm tired and want to lie down." So they did. And he laid down there, placing one foot on the other, and then he laid down mindful and clearly aware. It's always self-possessed, always present in a nice way for what he's doing.

And that's the last time he laid down. I don't know if he was there for a day or two. The story goes that different people came to visit him and he had final teachings for people. The very last person who came to the Buddha asking questions, wanting to be taught, came to the Buddha and said, "You know, there's lots of people, lots of spiritual teachers around all teaching the truth. Who's teaching the real truth? How do we know what the real truth is?" It's a reasonable question. As he does other times people ask that point of question, he doesn't answer it directly. He answers, "I'm not going to answer that, but wherever the Eightfold Path is, that's where you find people who become free." So wherever there's the practice, this is what I'm interested in. Truth is not so important, what I'm interested in is the practice. Here he's pointing to the Eightfold Path as the practice. So that's the last thing he said to someone who came to him for teaching.

And then he gathered his monks around him, this monastic community, and asked them, "I'm about to die, this is it. Do you have any last questions? This is your chance." I think he asked them three times, and no one had any questions for him. Which I think was maybe very satisfying, right? He was very concerned about leaving behind a legacy of enough people who had tasted the fruit of the Dharma, both monastic and lay, so that somehow the momentum could keep going. He had ascertained in his own mind that in fact, now in his old age, there were enough people who had tasted the fruit of the practice that he was not needed anymore. But he gave the monks still one last chance to clarify something.

When none of them answered, then he said:

"Now I'll tell you this: all conditioned things are of a nature to decay. Practice tirelessly."

All things will pass, all things will change and disappear. And his last words were, "Practice tirelessly." So again: practice, practice, practice. That's what he was most about, keep practicing.

And then we come to the very end. The Buddha entered meditation. He entered the first Jhāna^[9]. Leaving that, he entered the second, the third, and the fourth. Leaving the fourth Jhāna, he entered the sphere of infinite space, then the sphere of infinite consciousness, the sphere of nothingness, and the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception. And then into the cessation of feeling and perception. It's kind of like this was his meditation life, going through these states of meditation, and here just as he was dying, he went on one last tour. Visiting them, one last pilgrimage going through these deep states of meditation.

When he reached this very high state called cessation of feeling and perception, Ananda asked another monk named Anuruddha^[10], "Has the Buddha passed away?" And Anuruddha, who was a highly skilled meditator himself, could read or see, "Not yet."

And so then the Buddha left the attainment of the cessation of feeling and perception, goes backwards through them. He entered the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception, then into the sphere of nothingness, the sphere of infinite consciousness, the sphere of infinite space, and then back to the fourth Jhāna, the third, the second, and the first. So he's going up and down the ladder. And then he goes up again to the fourth Jhāna.

The fourth Jhāna is considered to be the place where it's easiest to let go fully, either to let go into enlightenment or let go into passing away. So here's a person who was fully a master of himself this last period of his life. He knew how to die. He engaged in a practice that brought him into a very wonderful space where the mind is very peaceful, very equanimous, very still. In that state, it just feels like the most wonderful thing you can do is to just continue that process of letting go. To enter those deep states of meditation, you have to do a lot of letting go to get there, and things become very thin. There's very little left to hold on to. Whatever is left to hold on to, maybe the life force or something, it just feels so good to let go of that as well.

So rather than death being like this drag... remember he said earlier, don't concern yourself with what's in the future, don't concern yourself with the past, just practice. Here he was practicing as he was dying, and it's a practice that involves a letting go that feels so healthy and so good, like one of the best things it feels you can do. He was ready to die. He died an old sick man. It was his time. And he died with one of the most wonderful things, the most peaceful, most wondrous, most luminous thing you can do, that final letting go.

And then he died. So this is a story of an old man who had found his peace. The world was falling apart around him, the world that he knew, and he was at peace anyway. He was calm, he was wise, he was caring for the world around him. He stopped and talked to people, and lots of people came to see him, and he would continue to talk and teach. He did this slow, unhurried walk. Some people think he was trying to walk back to his home country. If that's the case, the world is falling apart, and one form that took was that he wasn't able to reach his home country. He died in the woods with his people around him. Nothing too ceremonious, nothing really special about the place. In fact, Ananda kind of complained, "What are you doing dying here? This is not a special place, it's the middle of nowhere."

So then, the Heavenly Messenger, the messenger that it's possible to live in this world with a profound peace, and to die with a profound peace. What a fantastically positive, helpful message. It is possible to be in this world and find our peace, to have pulled out that arrow in the heart. The metaphor of an arrow in the heart means that some of the deepest sufferings and wounds that we carry with us is something that doesn't belong in there. It's external and it can be pulled out. Our suffering is not inherent, it's not innate like it's just there and it always has to be there. It's in some ways a foreign object. And so to practice to pull that arrow out, and when you do, then you're at peace.

So the Buddha's end of his life. We live in a time of change, we live in a time of strife. We live in a time where families are riven. We don't have sons yet, I think, killing their parents to take over the throne, but we have all kinds of challenges. I think the message from the Buddha is, yes, this is what happens in this life. Don't let that distract you from your ability to practice. Keep your confidence, and your courage, and your dedication to practice, no matter what in all this. So that you can be a person who is at peace with it. Not a naive acceptance of it, but the kind of peace where you're at peace so that you can make a difference in this world. So you could be a messenger for the happiness and welfare of this world, you can be a peacemaker in this world, wherever you go, to whatever degree that you can do this.

Maybe you can be a Heavenly Messenger. You will be, as I said, but maybe you can be the Heavenly Messenger that demonstrates peace. I've known a few people actually, but one person in particular who probably became the Heavenly Messenger when she was dying. And if you practice, then you can know that's when you need to practice, you're preparing to die, and the practice is to support you.

Take out your arrow. And then you can live unhurriedly, peacefully in this life, taking care of your life that you should live, and what you need to take care of, like the Buddha was taking care of everything before he died. Don't die too soon, but do practice soon.

So thank you. And be well, and take care of yourselves, and remember to practice. Thank you.