So after breath practice, you can move to shikantaza, or you can begin work on a breakthrough, koan, a first koan, you probably all know that these koans are were from ancient times. They are dialogs between a master and and their student, or between two masters. It could be lines from a Sutra or or lines from from the Master's talk. These, these are teaching stories, just like the one I read at the opening of this talk. These teaching stories help us to wake up and to make real in our lives what we've waken up to, they're often couched In what seems to be baffling or paradoxical language. But they only seem paradoxical when we are boxed in to our own words and concepts, our own definitions. Koan koans use words and concepts to get beyond words and concepts. People will often look at these koans as if they have no applicability to oneself. This is, these are. We're different people at different times, another time, another place. These. Many of them are monastics. Most are so it's easy to think that there's no relevance to our lives, but that's not true at all. I'll give you an example. This is from a dokan encounter with Hakuin Yasutani Roshi and one of his students, and I'm going to read the entire encounter. It's short, and the student is working on a koan. And this is what, what she says. The student is a woman, age 37 my koan is from where you are. Stop the distant boat moving across the water, Roshi demonstrate your understanding of the spirit of it. And then the student demonstrates that is good, but try it this way. And then, yeah, so ta Roshi demonstrates, do you understand the true spirit of this student? Yes, the boat and I are not too Roshi, that's right. When you become one with the boat, it ceases to be a problem for you. The same is true of your daily life. If you don't separate yourself from the circumstances of your life, you live without anxiety. In summer, you adapt yourself to heat. In winter to cold. If you are rich, you live the life of a rich man. If you are poor, you live with your poverty and. Were you to go to heaven, you would be an angel. Were you to fall into hell, you would become a devil. In Japan, you lived like a Japanese. In Canada, like a Canadian lived this way. Life isn't a problem. Animals have this adaptability to a high degree. Human beings also have it, but because they imagine they are this or that, because they fashion, they fashion notions and ideas of what they ought to be or how they ought to live, they are constantly at war with their environment and themselves. The purpose of this koan, then is to teach you how to be at one with every aspect of your life.