Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: The mist and clouds of unknowing mix at eye level in altitudes above.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Welcome to another installment of Unraveling Religion. I'm your host, Joel Lessees, and I'm here at Network of Religious Communities in Buffalo, New York, with my good friend and very gifted writer and advocate and many things, Chris Barbera. How are you doing today, Chris?
[00:00:22] Speaker A: I'm great, Joel. Good to see you.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: Good to see you, brother. Good to see you. So we set up this time to talk today before you had a little journey, before you had a little trip. And you took that trip, right?
[00:00:33] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: How was it?
[00:00:35] Speaker A: It was wonderful. Very enriching.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Yeah. How so?
[00:00:40] Speaker A: Resolutions, insights.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: What prompted you to go on that journey?
[00:00:47] Speaker A: Well, I went into the past in one level and in another level to the West Coast.
And what prompted it was, I just think three years of. Almost three years of pandemic. And then finally things clearing up a bit and feeling the need to, like, spread out a little bit. I was thinking of taking a retreat, but I thought, well, one of the best ways to take a retreat is a long train ride across the country.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: What were some of your physical destinations?
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Well, the two physical destinations were the city of Seattle and the city of San Francisco.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Oh, cool. Cool.
And so how long. How long was this trip?
[00:01:29] Speaker A: Just under two weeks. Yeah, it was a very whirlwind kind of thing.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
What did you glean from the time?
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Well, with the intention of a partial retreat and a partial pilgrimage and a partial vacation, it was a mixed and also a networking of people out on the west coast, some new friends and some old friends that I wanted to visit.
So it was a bunch of things mixed together. But the intention is we talked before. I mean, everything is a spiritual experience. So it's kind of hard to delineate between, you know, that which is spiritual and that which is not, or that which is physical or non. Physical and such. So it's all kind of holistic. But that being said, the. The. Some of the prompting that I suppose we'll talk about is more a pilgrimage oriented, more spiritual oriented.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: What does that mean to you, a pilgrimage?
[00:02:31] Speaker A: I believe, like setting an intention and seeing what can be unraveled through the pursuing of that, the meaning of that intention, to. To find some clarity in, to ask a couple questions and then to have your experience answer those questions.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: Israel Kabot, right? Israel Karot.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: Okay, sure.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: Yeah. I always considered the snow leopard, which I mentioned so frequently through these talks. Pilgrimage is a journey of the heart.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: Was there a fundamental lesson that you learned or something? Some Transformation that took place during that.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: Time, I'm not sure.
I mean, in the overarching transitions in my life have been from service oriented, you know, working with homeless people and people in prison, and before that, working with, you know, a broken family into more contemplative, literary pursuit of more devotional life.
So I think with this pilgrimage, it was kind of formalizing this devotional contemplative aspect of which is taking priority in my life and really trying to uncover some lessons in that, you know, and also to see where I had been when I was in the heart of it, when I voluntarily put my. Myself, my being into the heart of suffering in order as an act of mercy to.
To do what I. I felt I needed to do to fulfill that aspect of spirituality.
But now kind of going at it at a distant time, you know, 20 years past at this, as Dante said, at the midpoint of life, entering into the woods and to see it, like, reflecting upon the active part of my life and transitioning it into a devotional aspect of life.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: Yeah, very common in, like, some cultures that you. When you're at the midpoint of life, you transition to a devoted spiritual way, way of being.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: And it's also that, you know, I mean, I believe that, you know, people that are imbued with the spirit, which are all of us, but I think some are more actively engaged in it rather than engaged in, like, the material accumulation in life.
But devotion is always integrated and studiousness is always integrated into our life of action. It's not that these things are separate. It's just I look at it as more of a how we prioritize, you know, how we're engaging in the world.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. So tell me a little bit. Give a little background to your activism and advocacy for people and what you're reflecting upon in your contemplative phase now.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: Well, I mean, from the. The original aspects in my life, you know, entering into this world as the youngest child in a somewhat relatively large family and seeing, like, some death from siblings and divorce and handicapped siblings, you know, entering and as the youngest and seeing all that ahead of me, my. My first response was to.
To extend myself and extend compassion towards that.
And then, you know, after.
After I became 18 and left the house and went to college and then left college. I mean, graduated from college and such, and then entered into this other part of my life as an adult and took the original insight into, like, extending my compassion to people who are suffering.
And when I entered into San Francisco in the Tenderloin, which is A impoverished area in the midst of a lot of wealth.
And seeing this enormous contrast between billionaire and homeless people, literally like a block away from one another, really opened my eyes to the profound inequalities of.
In this world and how that creates a lot of suffering.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: And so fundamentally of our economic system.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: Our economic system and the value system that enhances that economic system and the racism and, and discrimination that's embedded in all that.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: And so it really woke me up to extending from my own personal experience of suffering into like the suffering of humanity, as it were, or the suffering in our particular society.
And so being with people in solidarity who were homeless was my first kind of activism and advocacy.
And it was done out of just being with people, being present with people, and walking with people and living and actually becoming homeless myself, where I, excuse me, read the teachings of different scriptures of how the, the Buddha had left the palace and became a wandering, you know, mendicant, wandering mystic and became homeless and how Jesus became homeless and reading these kind of stories, these narratives, and then seeing how they Correlated with late 20th, early 21st century America and in my own life.
So I began to integrate those kind of spiritual principles in my life in this 21st century America.
So then when I returned to Buffalo, New York from the West Coast, I got involved with a lot of anti war activism and a lot of.
Because it was the Iraq war, Afghanistan, Iraq, and all the militarism after 9, 11, and that kind of thing. And then I had met some people who were working with prisoners, people in prison and visiting people and offering free theological courses and books for people in prison.
And I got involved with that. And that was called Jesus the Liberator Seminary of Religious justice that I got involved in and been working with them for quite a number of years, more than a decade now.
And we had written three books on the experience of working with people and published some of the words of people on the inside. So it's a way of using creativity and theology as a way of amplifying the voices of people on the inside as well as people on the outside's solidarity and insights.
So we tried to synthesize like inner and outer insights around the prison industrial complex from a theological and creative writing perspective.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: Sure, yeah, it makes sense to me. I mean, so much of probably activism and advocacy is lending and cultivating voice, right? I mean, yes, because there are so many voices that are not heard, not known, not understood.
That makes sense within the context that they are placed.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: Yes, yeah. So we don't really give voice to People, we simply. What you just said, cultivate and amplify.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. That seems vital. Seems vital in a world today where, you know, the news machine is owned by a select few that sort of tell her what.
What we ingest as far as the happenings of the world.
And so one of the things that was cool when I began unraveling religion on Think Twice Radio.
I remember the first show that I ever published, Chris, and it was with Richard Wicka. And he said, as he punched the return key, he said, you are now worldwide.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah, yeah. Richard Wickey.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: A local media legend.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: He's mentored many. He's given voice to many who would not. Who would be without a heard voice otherwise.
But returning to your work, I'm just wondering, does that complete sort of the activism and advocacy, your history of the activism and advocacy?
[00:11:58] Speaker A: I mean, that's a nutshell of it. Yeah. I think there was a moment when I was living at a hospitality house and we were giving free. We were given free space or relatively inexpensive space for families of prison inmates who were visiting primarily from New York City, but from other locations as well. They would come to some of the upstate prisons in Western New York, like Attica and Wendy Correctional and such, and they would need a place to stay while they were visiting.
So we would go to the airport, to the bus station or the train station, pick them up, bring them back to the home and give them a room, share food with them, and then drive them out to the facility so that they can visit their people and then bring them back to the place and then bring them back to their. Their transportation hub as well. So we did all that, and that place was right next to a place that was at that time called Vive, which was a refugee home. It's now administered by Jericho Road, I believe. Okay, but they were refugees.
They weren't immigrants. They were refugees escaping torture in their countries and coming through Buffalo, which is on the border of Canada, and trying to get a legal status in Canada because they have generally had more tolerant, more accepting immigration policies in the US So there was that house, and they had an over. They would have overflows of people, no space to put them. So we took them into our house.
And the third aspect was there was a homeless family who we housed.
So at that moment, there was families of prison inmates, refugees, and homeless families that were all breaking bread together, that we were all living under the same house, and we were all cooking together, we were cleaning together, and we were all together as one. And for me, that was like, that's emblematic of like my activism.
You know, those were three of the, you know, oppressed communities.
[00:14:18] Speaker B: Marginalized by the system of power.
[00:14:20] Speaker A: Yes, yeah, that. Marginalized by a system of power. And those are the communities that.
That I have found myself most identified working with. Sure. In my adult life.
[00:14:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
What do you think?
Have you, in your, in your pilgrimage and in your contemplative portion of your life, have you come to see the why you do what you do for yourself personally?
[00:14:52] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good question.
I don't know if I've articulated that way, but I mean, I think there's something beyond my comprehension that.
That guides me, that it's a just a general compassion for other people that kind of guided me. However that originated, I mean, it may have originated through necessity in my life, but I think without the necessity, I would have gone into it anyways, it seems to me. Yeah, so I guess the why would be generally that the simple and or the most direct answer of why is compassion.
[00:15:39] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Makes sense. Makes sense. Which was cultivated in your family system and then as an outgrowth became your activism and advocacy.
Had mentioned earlier that your family system. There was, There was a need for you to become a caregiver.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.
[00:15:58] Speaker B: So in transition a little bit to the, the pilgrimage itself.
What would you say about it now? I mean, what are, what, how would you frame that, what is your, what is your relationship with that now, with pilgrimage, with your pilgrimage that you just took?
[00:16:15] Speaker A: Well, generally I would say that people have their vocations or their work, and then they need a break from their work and then they take a vacation.
But I. In my life, it's. It's kind of more seamless. It's that the distinction between on time and off time is not so clear cut. Like, it's, it's just kind of all together.
And so there's on time and off time.
When I'm at any time in life, you know, there's so to make a grand distinction between this and that.
So that. That's first off, I would say that.
But the pilgrimage is more of like an intentional kind of time.
There's a certain time and space that is filled with a certain intentionality and devotional aspect, you know, which is. I mean, the Bible would say there's a holy and a holy of holies.
I guess it's similar to that, that everything is.
Everything is spiritual. But then there are moments that that spirituality becomes more intentionalized or the discovery of it perhaps, I guess is what A pilgrimage would be like, what it. What uncovers, like how. How we act, why we act. You know, there could be pilgrimage. I've been in pilgrimages where it was tied into vocational work, you know, that we were advocating for migrant workers or raising awareness about nuclear energy and things like that, or war, you know, that the pilgrimage is directly tied to a cause that we want to highlight and try to address the suffering that that cause is bringing and bring about alternatives and healing. So that's one kind of a pilgrimage. But then the more personal kind of thing where people call retreats and such is the pilgrimage that some people take. They go to the Ganges river or to Jerusalem or such.
But for me, it was the Tenderloin in San Francisco.
I went to a ghetto rather than a holy site. But for me, they're one in the same.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: They can be, depending upon what you realize there.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
So you have some. Do you have some writings from the. As we. We open with the haiku, which I think was a really beautiful piece of writing.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: I'm wondering if you have any. Any writings from the pilgrimage or other writings that you'd like to share.
[00:19:00] Speaker A: Yeah, we can. Yeah, we can. I can share as we were talking about, but it ties into the. The being homeless and being in. In all aspects of the word, you know, being rootless.
So I'll read a little bit of that, which was the.
But leading up to that, I would say that some of the. The journeying out on the train across the country is that I had at one time gone to.
I made a pilgrimage to Wounded Knee, South Dakota, which was the site of a massacre in 1890, when the United States Cavalry had no more.
When their wars against Native people were kind of culminating in the conquest of the entire continent.
And that was the. The last stand of those of that generation of Sitting Bull and Black Elk.
So I went there to.
As a pilgrimage as well. And I was taken in by a Lakota couple under the statue of Crazy Horse. And they.
They had given. When I left them sometime later, they.
The woman Vicky, gave me sunflower seeds and raisins and advised me to go to the Badlands and pray and just eat. Subsist on that and water for some time. And I did.
And so when I took this pilgrimage years later, when I was on the train across the country, I did the same thing and took sunflowers and raisins and water.
And then when I arrived and I was studying some devotional books and trying to understand that the spirit is invested in all Life. But there are distinctions.
And when I got off the train in Seattle, I gave what was remaining of my seeds to some young guy who was homeless on the street.
And.
And we shared a moment together.
But disordering the senses, losing the world in order to see.
This is the teaching of the sages.
What did Jesus deny in the desert? The world.
My kingdom is not of this world.
I smoked medicinal herbs for 40 days and nights and learned 1,001 stories.
And only one is Arabic.
Jesus the Christ. My kingdom is not of this world. The kingdom of Indra.
I have no kingdom in these plains.
Dog Stars Cerberus.
To be without a home. Laws of enclosure disclosed. Material world dissolves.
All is made plain. Left open.
To open up and see, to move freely. Who becomes the tenant? That house which enclosed dimension. All possibilities enter into one of them. A way of making plain become clean. Who is your family?
All that which is not above the sun, all below the ocean states of epiphany. Epiphanic state Symmetry. Seeing the spark in the tongue. Speak amongst non entities is non words in the which chain of being. And before the cause the eclipse, the moving all inside and moving still. And a point of pure light through a pure sensation. For thy light is quicker than thy sound before. Ah, yes.
To crack the shell and serve your fortitude to be released from what you had believed at to this point.
Not all was necessary to forget. Worth is many things seen in dimensions retrieved of memory. This is how we construct from a personal release point to fluid reaction. Maybe a recalling certainly of what could be called certain. Yes. Choose the moment to be. I will choose. No, I am not afraid. You are now, are you?
No. I have come and passed through this point before.
And the blunt runs thickest in the present.
Oh, so what you call present? When was it constructed?
It wasn't constructed. It is.
It is made plain at moments when evoked call back, withdraw.
You will see. Hear the mystic chords.
Ah, the celestial messenger. Yes, you. That was what? Be careful, brother. You know not all the ways of trickery.
In darkness. Sometimes one must guess.
Choose, brother.
I will not choose between the darkness. Then open into the light.
Ah, I see it coming. No more dreams, for all is real. A transition from stream to creek. A movement eternal. Here. Choose. I am. I live my choice.
Take it on, brother. Take on the weight of others.
Alleviate their pain. And in so doing all the world without end. For never and forever light shall shine you who hear and feel, see and be joyous.
For the task shall end.
Never can you rid the pain, the pain of others, all united. Be thy light. Be a light unto them. Suffer. Extend the hand and your hand shall be made clean.
For only in suffering. Joy Burton Goats slit the neck. Pure lamb's blood. Release. Look up there, David. The sky. They will try to pin you, brother. Try to name you this or that. Choose.
But you, O best among men, know who you are. You are eternal. The sourceless, formless, made clean, pure. A light shining through you found form many circulations. You had to ascend. You saw and departed. The clear crisp border, the center still point. You went through the circle and returned to share, to lift those who could have you for all this, even them.
Because your pure heart and vision in all things you chose to love. To show you.
Oh, best among women.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: That's beautiful, Chris.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
I'm astounded at your flow, the currents, the channels that you open to and tap into, you know.
[00:25:36] Speaker A: Thank you. I think part of that is like the, you know, in childhood when there's so much pain and argument and, you know, anger and noise and chaos around then. The one, the one source of solace is to. Is music.
And so I think intuitively I just like picked up on Melodies of Music and incorporated into like writing.
[00:26:07] Speaker B: Yeah, beautiful. Beautiful.
And so when was this piece written?
[00:26:14] Speaker A: Well, that particular piece was written years ago.
[00:26:18] Speaker B: Yep.
But it relates, it relates to the themes that we've been talking about.
[00:26:23] Speaker A: Yeah. The other piece I wrote just recently that I read just a moment ago, but so I wanted to, you know. Yeah. Include something that was written when I was in the heart of being homeless.
So I think in the writing process too, it'll be interesting to, to coalesce or compile like past and present writings as long as they, you know, there's, there's some symmetry with it.
[00:26:53] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: So the, the other kind of pilgrimage was to the ocean and, and standing out by the, the water and.
And I was also homeless by the water, which was another kind of more contemplative experience.
You know, there was a. Just hearing that the sound of the waves and walking the sand on the shore was a, was a nice moment in time, which was, you know, and even now, completely outside of the productivity model of modern American economic life, where everything is based around the accumulation of wealth, where you just kind of renouncing that, you know, there's a certain renunciation of like, what the, the priorities of this so called advanced society are offering. And then to stand outside that, you know, is.
Involves a certain form of saying no.
[00:28:03] Speaker B: You know, and objectivity and penetrating perception of What. What that is you're standing outside of.
[00:28:12] Speaker A: Yes. And what you're standing for as well.
[00:28:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:15] Speaker A: And the things that I. That I was standing for were the things we talked about earlier, The. The different marginalized communities.
[00:28:21] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:28:24] Speaker A: And that's a different way of doing it than playing the game and then doing charity.
[00:28:31] Speaker B: Yeah. There. There's so many different ways. But what. What you. What you're.
What you're describing in your life journey reminds me of the.
I don't know if you're familiar in Buddhism, in the Mahayana tradition, in Zen, there's the ten ox herding depictions. Are you familiar with them?
[00:28:51] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I've seen those pictures.
[00:28:53] Speaker B: But the last one is entering into the marketplace with an open hand, ready. Ready to address what comes, what's needed, what's wanted, and what needs care.
[00:29:05] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
Yeah. It reminds me that the. The parable of, first there is a mountain, then there's no mountain, then there's a mountain.
Is that similar to the ox or.
[00:29:18] Speaker B: It is, yeah, it's the same. The same experience, the same realization of reality.
[00:29:26] Speaker A: But the oxtail is a more delineated process.
Like, it describes more episodes.
[00:29:35] Speaker B: There are 10 oxfording depictions, and it describes the search for the true nature, for our true nature, which is sought by people who sit in meditation in all forms of meditation, which is really what unraveling religion is about. It's about the commonalities that we share in our human condition.
And beyond any specific practice or any specific rel. Religious system or any kind of notions of constructed thought in spirituality, inherently, it's not just the same.
It's. Well, it's the same, but it's. It's. It's. It's shared. It's one. It is the same. I guess you could say it is the same. Yeah.
And we are all the same self. We are all the same thing.
[00:30:24] Speaker A: So is unraveling religion in the marketplace now? Now, as it were?
[00:30:28] Speaker B: Well, I don't know. It's found itself in many different iterations in many different places. But, you know, I love the notion of the dao, the dao de jing. And the dao is the watercourse way it finds itself to the lowest levels or the lowest recesses or the lowest realms and makes a home there, too. You know what I mean? So, like, it's the marketplace and it's the dao, I think. You know, I don't know. I mean. Or maybe it's none of those things. Maybe. Maybe there's. There are elements of something else at work. I Don't know. So.
[00:31:08] Speaker A: Yeah, well, what comes to mind too, is that that is lazu.
And there was another sage by the name of Li Tsu, who was.
It seemed to go even more into the water in the sense of like, not quite. Well, somewhat like the Wu way, like do without doing that there is no struggle, as it were, that life just is. And that all our human attempts to attain enlightenment are in a sense, unnecessary because. Because we're already enlightened.
[00:31:46] Speaker B: Right. I mean, from. Right. So I come at it from like Roshi, Phil Kaplan used to say. I think he quoted. It may have been originally Kierkegaard, but he said he had a very pointed quote that said, life is not a riddle to be solved.
It's a reality to be lived. It's saying the same thing that you are, that inherently, whether we do realize or don't realize, other than a shift in our understanding of how we serve, there is no difference between people whether they.
The notion. The term enlightenment is a. Not an accurate term. I mean, it's like, you know, there's. There's a story that when. When the Buddha had his moment under the.
The star, the morning star, and then he came out of that and some people approached him and said they noticed his presence and they asked him, are you a God? Like, what are you? He just simply said, I am awake.
He didn't say that he was enlightened. He didn't say that he was.
He just said that he was awake.
[00:33:00] Speaker A: Yeah. To always be discerning, you know, to always be determining, you know, this from that.
The right course of action.
[00:33:14] Speaker B: You know, that's. That's a very. What you just described is a very potent topic because how we do that, like, do we do it with our minds? Do we do it with our hearts? Do we do it with a blending of the two?
[00:33:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I believe so.
[00:33:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:28] Speaker A: And just a moment ago, we're speaking about the.
To be a life, to be experienced.
[00:33:34] Speaker B: A reality, to be lived.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: A reality to be lived.
[00:33:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:38] Speaker A: But what I would add to that would be that the reality to be lived has to be that there has to be a distinction between that. In. In my life, like, I had to distinguish between the reality of the marketplace, as it were, the.
The value system of what I saw as the.
The empire, the military. The military financial empire.
[00:34:01] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: And all the. The problem.
[00:34:03] Speaker B: Prison industrial complex, the military industrial complex.
[00:34:07] Speaker A: All of that, you know, the culture.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: Neo feudalism.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: Yeah, all of that. You know, and. And just sum it up with the word empire, you know, for. Just for Time's sake, to say that. So that, that, that to make a distinction between that reality and the quote, unquote, spiritual reality, the things that we are talking about.
So it is, it is a reality to be lived.
However, I do believe that a distinction has to be made between, I guess what the Buddha would call, you know, right. The right path or the right livelihood.
[00:34:42] Speaker B: Right, right action, right thought, right speech, written attention, all that.
[00:34:46] Speaker A: Right.
[00:34:47] Speaker B: Well, it's interesting, I think of this, this haiku which I use often in different writings.
Babasha said, come see real flowers of this painful world.
I mean, that's being in the marketplace. And that's, that's also. You were talking about the, the Bhagavad Gita earlier and cutting down ignorance or cutting through ignorance with the weapon of detachment. Right. That's from the Bhagavad Gita, I believe.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I had before that I, I think a subtle evolution in my life too was that I came to see like that some of the images of the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita and such as for very martial, very warlike. The Greeks do.
There's this.
A lot of the gods and a lot of the teachings are, have like these military metaphors, like to cut off the roots, you know, to go to war with the spirit and all that.
And you know, jihad itself.
[00:35:52] Speaker B: I mean, what is that? It's the holy war. Yeah, the holy war within.
[00:35:55] Speaker A: The holy war within. And you know, and I, and I, and I understand like metaphorically that in this world that you have to use those kind of stark images and metaphors to grab the attention into and also to transform it so that, you know, Jesus was a peasant, but he was. Became a king of kings because the king of Rome was an emperor, so became the emperor of the spirit and all that to kind of transform.
And I get all that, but I also, you know, it's speaking about like leaving and like that enlightenment, you know, to do without doing an enlightenment, that it's not a riddle to be solved, but just to be experienced life and this, this constant like struggling and fighting to attain enlightenment on some level. You know, I think once you attain internally a certain kind of understanding of that, then maybe it's time to let it go.
[00:36:56] Speaker B: I agree. I, I think many people do struggle with the why, the why of life. Why are we here? Why does this suffering exist? Why? Why are things this way? And I, you know, I, I learned a long time ago, they kind of like, for the divine. The why is for the divine.
It's for human beings, the how how do we do these things?
And so but we grapple with existential questions and koans and like suffering. And so the suffering really points us to why is this the case?
I think that's true of many people.
[00:37:35] Speaker A: And the how would be how to.
[00:37:37] Speaker B: Overcome the suffering, how to address it? I think. Yeah.
[00:37:40] Speaker A: Oh, not to overcome it.
[00:37:42] Speaker B: Well, I think it's both. I think it's I think, I think being in the marketplace, we've shared crazywise before, but, you know, the notion of someone, someone to address suffering in the world, they must address their own suffering. So certainly, how to overcome suffering and then how to address it. I think it's both, as I appreciate yours. Thanks so much, Chris.
[00:38:09] Speaker A: Thank you.
