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Namaste and blessings. Welcome.

And it really is a pleasure to have you with us. Thank you for joining in.

People listening often send me different bits and pieces through the weeks, poems and quotes

and a lot of cartoons. I'm thinking that the community is trying to serve my deepest needs.

Especially in these last weeks, I'll just share one that came in basically said,

so far, 2020 is like looking both ways before crossing the street and then getting hit

by an airplane. Another was a shopper saying, I've decided to return 2020. It just didn't

meet my expectations. And then of course, there's been countless takes on the restrictions

of confines of being at home, sheltering at home. And one then just showed a dog on a psychiatrist

couch and the psychiatrist saying, so when did you start seeing an invisible fence?

So thank you for whatever you send to me. I enjoy these.

The background theme, of course, of all of them is the intensity, the trauma, the anxiety,

the uncertainty of these times. And then with that, of course, for so many of us, this

continuing inquiry, which is so central, which is really how can our hearts hold it? How

can we respond to what's going on for ourselves and for others and our world in a way that serves?

So a part of looking at this, or as a way of looking at this, I want to start with a story

and it's a kind of a classical teaching myth that you find in many different traditions.

And it's one that I've always really loved. And so you might sit back and listen. In the

clouds of the distant past, there was a monastery that had fallen upon difficult times. There

were conflicts and power struggles between the monks. There was disrespect and tension

...