This is May 1, 2022, Labor Day for most people in the world. And I'd like to, since this is my first teisho, first day here in Rochester in six months. I want to start by thanking Sensei, John Pulleyn-sensei, for having shouldered the task of teaching here - being at the helm of the Center for the past six months. It's a great, great, generous thing he did in accepting this partnership with me, of him doing it for six months and alternating with me for six months. Generous. He, he would have had so many good reasons to decline, but he stepped in. And from absolutely everything I've heard, he's been doing a great job. It's one of the reasons it's been a winter of contentment for me just knowing that things are in good hands here have been. For those of you who might ask this very broad question of me later on as to how it's been, how these six months have been, I've gone into some length in a article that will appear in the next issue of Zen Bow. And what makes me think of this now is that I could summarize the article with the title I gave it, which is "Winter of Contentment and Loss". Thanks also to the Zoom monitors, the people monitoring the Zoom sittings. This has been my thread of connection from Florida. It's, it's really another generous and compassionate act to do that. It's, after a while, I'm told it's somewhat routine but there are always things that can go wrong. And you need good people who can troubleshoot who can be alert and mindful to keep things on track in the zoom sittings, and teishos, I guess, also, talks of any kind Dharma Talks. So what I thought I would do this morning, I was going to comment on the recent self-immolation of a young man or middle aged man on the steps of the Supreme Court, but I just thought I'd rather put that off a bit and, and dive into one of the great central texts of Zen, which is what we just chanted five minutes ago together, the Hakuin Chant - Master Hakuin's Chant in Praise of Zazen. And in preparing this morning, I didn't really start till this morning, we just got in last night. We got moved into our studio apartment, Angela and I, that we'll be renting for the month of May, and then after that, she'll go back to Florida, and I'll move into the Zen Center to live here for the first time in 30 years or 30 some years. But in preparing for this, I was reminded, as I have been in the past when I've commented on that it's, it is such a rich text, that I probably am not going to get much more than halfway today. And so I'd like to resume next Sunday with part two. I would I would call this, the Hakuin Chant, one of the three most important texts, short texts that anyone could learn and delve into endlessly. The other two is the Affirming Faith in Mind and, of course, the Prajna Paramita. These three, really any one of them, really goes to the essence of this Dharma. And I've continued to find each one of them inexhaustible. So let's kick it off with the first line. From the very beginning all beings are Buddha. This lays down the very core article of faith in Zen. Every one of us is Buddha. Let's just again look at the word Buddha. When it's when it's plural Buddhas, it refers to the enlightened ones, anyone who's come to awakening. You can define that differently, you could say, who comes to full, full enlightenment all the Buddhas of the past. It could be even someone who is even more faintly experienced the truth of the Dharma of seeing into her own nature or the other way of putting it is the nature of reality. That's plural, "Buddhas". Buddha, is I see just as shorthand for our Buddha-nature. Our true self, our self nature, our original nature, original mind, the closest thing we have and in Zen to God. And it lays it all out right out. Hakuin lays it out from the very beginning, all beings are Buddha. Originally, way back in the 70s, when we started chanting this, we had from the beginning, all beings are Buddha. And then we added the word very from the very beginning, just for emphasis. The very beginning all beings are Buddha. But even the word beginning could raise questions, the beginning? What came? What's that mean? What's the beginning? What would be before that? To even use a term like the beginning or the end, such terms are dualistic and they really address only half of reality, of things as they are. The other half is the beginningless and endless nature of reality.