All Things Contemplative
All Things Contemplative
Episode 6: Zen - The Religion of No-Religion with David Parks
Show Notes
David Parks is the Director of Bluegrass Zen, one location of the Pacific Zen Institute in Waco, KY with groups in both Lexington and Berea, KY. He was a minister for many years in the United Church of Christ before devoting himself full time to teaching Zen. David has a deep trust in life’s generosity and views koans as vehicles for transformation, capable of opening the heart to the intimate experience of life lived freely and fully. David has a special interest in the parables, sayings, and doings of Jesus as Christian koans.
David Discusses: his understanding of “contemplative” drawing on Thomas Merton’s epiphany at 4th and Walnut in Louisville KY, the Buddha and Jesus’s view of the oneness of existence, the Zen practices of meditation and koans, the importance of non-grasping for opening the Heart to the vastness of life, the difference between spirituality and morality, the relevance of Zen for healing a divided world, the Gospel of Thomas, Christian based koans, and the nature of beliefs.
References From the Show
Pacific Zen Institute
Thomas Merton’s Epiphany at 4th & Walnut
Shunryu Suzuki (Zen Mind, Beginners Mind)
Frederic Spiegelberg, The Religion of No-Religion
The All Things Contemplative Blog
Speaker 1:
Welcome. This is Ron Barnett. I am the host of All Things Contemplative, the podcast where we explore the diverse ways in which one can awaken to the contemplative dimension of life and practices that support such awakening. Our guest today is David Parks, and I'll be introducing David in a moment. But first, a couple of housekeeping items. First off, if you have a person or a topic that you would like to see on the podcast, I invite you to let me know. My email address is on the podcast website, it's on the blog. And feel free to drop me a recommendation for whom you would like to see. The other item I wanted to mention was that if you have questions or comments about the podcast today, again would invite you to go to the podcast blog and leave your comment or question underneath the recording of today's session.
I'll do my best to try to respond to you. So our guest today is David Parks. By way of introduction, David is the director of Bluegrass Zen, which is a satellite center of the California base Pacific Zen Institute. Bluegrass Zen is located in Waco, Kentucky and it has meditation and study groups in Lexington and bere. David received ordination in the United Church of Christ before devoting himself to Zen teachings at the Pacific Zen Institute. He has a deep trust in life's generosity, and in particular sees Koans as vehicles for personal transformation, opening heart and mind to the intimate experience of life lived freely and fully. David has a special interest in the parables, the sayings, and the doings of Jesus as transformative Koans. David's appearance today on the podcast is a little bit of a old home week in a sense as I grew up in Kentucky, as did David, and I've known of David for a little over 50 years since his father, a practicing psychiatrist at the time, introduced me to sitting meditation when I was in college. So old home week here. David, welcome to all things contemplative. So as I try to do with each guest at the beginning, I would invite you to, if you would tell me what you understand by the word contemplative, what makes someone or something contemplative.
Speaker 2:
Great. Ron, thank you for the opportunity to be here, and it is kind of wonderful to connect with you again after all these years. My father, I guess, taught you meditation and a huge piece of my growing up I think is that both my mother and my father were meditating in the house for in my house, the house I grew up in my whole life. And I think that was a huge formative experience just to know whether I was meditating or not. But now I look back and I say, oh, there was a grounding in our house that maybe a lot of people don't get. It was a bit unusual, I suppose, to have your parents in the early or late fifties, early sixties, meditating there.
Speaker 1:
Probably most people don't have that. Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 2:
I was able to give it to my kids, so that's good enough. But the word contemplative, when I knew you were going to ask me this question, and what came to mind was Thomas Merton's experience on the corner of fourth and now it's MLK, but the corner of fourth and walnut. He said that in Louisville. I wrote it down and I've got it here in Louisville at the corner of Fourth and Walnut. I came to the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. And he talked about waking from a dream of separateness, and he reflected on his own experience in the monastery, waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self isolation and a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The sense of liberation from an illusory difference was a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. I bet you he did. But anyway, and then what he says about it is I wish that everyone could know that they're walking around as bright, shining as the sun. And so it's a journey from contemplation is realizing that, oh, this is my life. This is the life I'm having, and I'm not separate from that life. I'm just having a life.
And when we awaken, the contemplative experience is such that, oh, I realize that I'm not separate and that all this, this is mine and I'm theirs and no separation at all. And that's the contemplative experience. And you go across religions and you go across in zen in particular, you go in and you say, oh, this is what zen points to this contemplative experience. And actually guess what? We have practices that might help you with that,
Speaker 1:
And we're going to talk about those
Speaker 2:
In
Speaker 1:
Time.
Speaker 2:
So this experience of an open heart, realizing not even our kinship that says, I'm your aunt or uncle and I'm separate from you, but our identity with all that is
Speaker 1:
When you were reading the quote from Merton, I just wrote down here the word belonging. There's a belongingness, and that seems to be characteristic of contemplative experience where not to set up, I don't belong versus I belong, but being one, that word one.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
And as soon as you start talking about it, you're separate from it again. As soon as you give it a name belonging, then that's something apart from the actual belonging that in each moment for that reason, Zen gets, its the origin or story is one of the Buddha on Vulture Peak, and he's supposed to give a speech and all he does or give a talk, and all he does is he holds a flower up and Maha Ashra smiles and there are no words exchanged. And then the Buddhist says, so I transmit to Maha Ashra. He gets it. In other words. And the follow up to that, as you read the koan, it's a special transmission outside the scriptures not founded on words and letters, but pointing directly to one's mind. It lets one's see into one's true nature and attain Buddha Hood,
Speaker 1:
A name that not many people know about. David is a fellow named Frederick Spiegelberg. He was a professor of comparative religion at Stanford. People may know him. He was actually the teacher, spiritual teacher of Michael Murphy, who co-founded the Essent Institute. And in 1953, maybe even before Zen came ashore here, I think Suzuki was probably active here with his writings, but Spielberg wrote a book called The Religion of No Religion, the Religion of No Religion. And he's not writing about atheism, but he went on in that book to talk about zen as the prototypic religion of no religion in that it doesn't rely on beliefs or doctrines or dogma or even God is commonly understood. Could you comment on that notion? Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Well, if you have the experience, why do you need all that?
Speaker 1:
Is that a koan, David? I guess
Speaker 2:
Suppose belief. Belief is something that we have separate from ourselves, a belief in this or that, a belief in Jesus as a son of God or whatever it is, when one's heart opens, you too experience the kingdom of God. You too experience your Buddha nature. Your already Buddha heart opens and you realize, oh, this is who I am. I often, and this kind of gets into the interfaith piece that I've worked with, I think of the I am statements of Jesus and the gospel of John. Either Jesus was this huge egotist or he's pointing to, I am the bread of life, I am the living water. He's pointing to the vastness of things. And in the gospel of John, it's real interesting. In the beginning was the word that in itself is a koan. Why don't you show me that word? It's before the beginning. In the beginning. Before the beginning.
Speaker 1:
Well, I want to return to Jesus's sayings as Koans a little bit more deeply, but I want to back up, I think return to the bluegrass if we could, and talk about what you teach at bluegrass sin. We assume it's not bluegrass music, although there's nothing wrong with that, but what do you teach at bluegrass in
Speaker 2:
It's interesting. Ryan McCoy, who's the cantor for us, and now that we're on Zoom, the cantor sings solo sutras, but it's done with guitar and he's from Tennessee, so maybe tending in the folk direction. But basically there are two main, we teach meditation and koans and meditation. Zen meditation can be distinguished from other forms of meditation. In zen meditation, it includes everything. If all of this is of a piece, what would you exclude? Right? As soon as you exclude it, oh, then it's not of a piece anymore. You, you're excluding something. So with the zen meditation, we just bring everything in and we notice it, our thoughts, our feelings, things that we would rather not things that, oh, that's it. All that comes as we sit, all that comes in and we just notice what's there. And the notion is if we don't grab hold of it and say, this is it, then it will open into the vastness, just that Anyway,
Speaker 1:
So correct me if I'm wrong, David, but it sounds like just being purely aware of whatever you're aware of,
Speaker 2:
Would
Speaker 1:
That be without letting go of it, without
Speaker 2:
Returning
Speaker 1:
To your breath or a mantra or anything else? Just
Speaker 2:
Those might be means to help you pay attention, but they're not the point. Yeah, I think as the heart opens and we're just there in our lives, and we can be there without having to grab and say, this is better than that, without having to judge or fix anything or change anything, it is just welcoming what's here. And when we meditate to add to that, we bring Koans into our meditation and the koan, it is hard to explain because now you're talking about something rather than just the experience of it. But you could say its sort of like the difference between a sign and a symbol. A sign says stop, and then you stop a symbol. It participates in the reality that it is. The koan participates in. The vastness itself is a gate into the vastness, and it invites you there. It says it is part of the call and response of the universe, the mountain that is sitting outside the window here that I'm looking at, calls for my response. I see it. And the koan does the same thing. It says, here I am, what's moving in your heart now? And sometimes with a koan, it'll bring up negative stuff again because well, we've got that stuff and things from the unconscious will come up, and what do we do? Just notice, don't grab hold. And then you find that that will pass, that will pass, and things can open for you.
Speaker 1:
Do you concentrate on the koan, and correct me if I'm wrong, is usually framed as a question.
Speaker 2:
Sometimes. Sometimes it's a story.
Speaker 1:
I was just going to think listeners, David listeners may be familiar with the stereotypic koans of what's the sound of one hand clapping? What was your face before you were born? What would be something you would, yeah,
Speaker 2:
I mean, those are the questions. And those particular koans are breakthrough and what is quickly before thinking good and evil quickly. Okay, so don't think about it a whole lot before you separate the universe into this and that good and evil. What is your original face before your parents were born?
Speaker 1:
Not just you, but your parents. Yeah,
Speaker 2:
Yeah. I've heard it said grandparents too. And you're not allowed to say, well, you have to show me that face. And when you're able to do that, you're showing yourself as, oh, I'm part of all this. Right? What is your face before your parents were born, before you've divided up the world, you see the direction that goes. And I'm trying to think of a story that's relatively short and I can remember it correctly. This is from Y men. He goes in the whole cosmos. There is one treasure inside the body. It goes down, it takes the lantern and goes down to the meditation hall. It takes the great three tiered gate, that's the big gate of the entrance of the monastery and puts it on top of the lantern. So there are a number of stopping points along that description. You say, okay, that's interesting, isn't it? So there's one treasure inside the body. What's that for you? Show me that one treasure inside the body, and then it goes down to the meditation. Oh, show me that. And then it places the three tiered gate on top of the lantern. So there you have the koan dish wanders into the impossible. And within the vastness of things, things, oh, okay, I'll do that. I'll show you
Speaker 1:
That. So I'm going, could kind be the hardheaded scientist here. David, ask the question, how does, let's say that was a koan that I was contemplating or considering, and I had such realization. How would that help me just as a person with issues, problems, everyone else has problems, challenges, what's the pragmatic value, would you
Speaker 2:
Say? So once your heart opens to the vastness, where's the problem?
Speaker 1:
But I try to, the, yeah, I would say it. It's merged into the vastness. So some sense it's there, but it's not there.
Speaker 2:
And what that means, I think practically is I'm not holding on to it anymore. I'm not relating to it as if it's my whole life and things are all going to fall apart. Just one more thing. And I get to respond to that. Just like I can respond to the sunrise this morning coming up in the east, the red sky, it's like, and we can respond. We can respond to what we might've seen as our problems is, oh, this is something I need to do. And this is probably a big misunderstanding in the culture. It's like, oh man, it's all one. I call it stoners then sort of it's like, wow, this is great. But it comes zen alive in you and your life and the world. In our school, we talk about the building of character through Koans, bringing your realization into your everyday life because what damn good would it be if you didn't? I? You need to do something with it. So
Speaker 1:
Very pragmatic,
Speaker 2:
Right? And that's a very, yeah, and you see in the tradition, very earthy. I mean, the monks of China were really, really earthy guys, and there was no sense that they were apart from life. They were always right in it.
Speaker 1:
You said you bring the coan into your meditation. So is that if you were having a sitting practice as you described it earlier, you would then bring in a coan to consider,
Speaker 2:
Right? Right. So yeah, you're sitting and then it would be say, okay, we have a koan for today, and what's your original face before your parents are born? So you bring the koan in, you just bring it to mind, and then you let it do what it does. Usually in life, what we're doing is we're grabbing hold of things and saying, oh, this will be good for this and this will be good for that, and for the koans, and then probably for life in general, I mean it's like, let them come to you, let life come to you, and then see how you're part of all that. See what comes up for you. How does your life meet the koan? So you bring it to mind and then you let it live in you, in your practice centering prayer. It gets to the point, you bring your centering word in and then it begins to repeat itself. You may not even hear it, but it's working in your heart. And then it's just the word and there's just the universe. So it's somewhat similar.
Speaker 1:
It even takes a step further where you're not even saying the word or you're not even conscious of the word. There's pure consent to what is.
Speaker 2:
It's interesting the Koans work like that. I can be working here on the farm and digging a hole to put something in or post hole or something, and the koan just pops up. I said, oh, this is the koan. So in some ways, really what we're doing is we're letting the koan work in us. Not unlike in some Christian circles, they speak of the in spiritual direction, who's the true director? It's the spirit herself is directing. The koan itself is directing your meditation and is there in your life. And when you notice it, then you can notice how your life is changing.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it was interesting getting ready for the podcast recording today. There was some question whether you were going to have internet access and if you did, whether it would be adequate speed-wise for us to do the recording. And as I was getting up this morning, I went and swam, drank coffee. It was sort of like having to live without knowing certitude that if it all worked out, if it didn't, we would deal with it. But I still had to prepare as if you were going to have good internet access,
Speaker 2:
You live your life and me. Yeah,
Speaker 1:
It was like a real teaching lesson, quite frankly, that what initially sounded like a disaster in terms of our planning versus what life presents. As you were saying, it was what it was.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. There was a koan that, and this really gets to the heart of Xan, a lot of Koans talking about not knowing. The one I'm thinking of right now is someone comes to Fon and Fon says to him, well, where have you been and where are you going? And he says, I'm out on pilgrimage. And Fon says, well, how is that for you? And he says, I don't know. And Fon says, not knowing is most intimate. And you can see that Koans, like if it's like when I moved out west, I didn't want to learn the names of the plants,
Speaker 1:
The plants,
Speaker 2:
The plants. It's a completely different universe. Out in California, there's manzanita trees, not oak trees. There's different kinds of grasses and cactuses and just all kinds of stuff. And without the name I don't know the name, then the knowing doesn't, or it doesn't stop there, you can actually move more into relationship with what? With what's here. And that's how our knowing, it's like, oh, I know a lot about this and that, and now I'm an expert, but I can't experience it anymore. So what is it in the Shandra Suzuki, in the expert's mind, there are a few possibilities. The beginner's mind, the possibilities are endless or something like that. Yeah, just meeting life for the first time. Every moment, meeting life and not knowing what it's going to be. So we didn't know, but here we are, and I don't know what you're going to ask me next, and you don't know what I'm
Speaker 1:
Going to say. Well, I hope I'm coming up with something that I haven't told you about before. We'll see how it goes. But you said something interesting just a moment ago, David. You said that zen comes alive in a person. So as I understand that it's not where there's some rules or doctrines that you then try to follow something outside yourself that you tend to then try to apply to life. But I mean, the image I just had was, it's like a seed inside you that all of a sudden starts to germinate and kind of grows into something and blossoms. In working with students, what do you find are some of the challenges that people have in allowing, I suppose that's the right word, allowing zen to come alive in oneself?
Speaker 2:
It really is knowing I know who I am. Oh, that's too bad. This I'm that. I'm a father, I was a minister, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Those can move and get in the way of dropping down into the Dao mystery of things. And far better to not know who you are, that your openness, that openness into the vastness, into the open heart. That doesn't mean you don't do stuff and function in a certain way. You're in the world, but you do it in accord. I mean, you can move in accord with the way, with the vastness of things. And this way, a lot of spiritualities, they get confused between spirituality and morality and a lot of spiritualities. If you're good, then you get to go to heaven, you get the goods. So I mean, nothing wrong with that. But as we penetrate into the heart of things, we find compassion, grace, and love there. And when we move in accord with that, we move in accord with compassion, grace, and love. And we don't have to add something, put a veneer on the top. Often when a social activists, they'll identify with an idea or an ideology, and then they'll work it and they'll burn out. A lot of people burn out. When you penetrate into the heart of things, there's no burnout because you're just participating in what's here.
Speaker 1:
It sounds effortless. Is it effortless? Yeah. Is it effortless?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, at times. Yeah. There's a book, you may be familiar with it, it's written by a guy named Valentin Tomberg. The meditations on the tarot, a classic Christian text actually read it and you say, yeah, that's really good. And then you get to the end and someone asks you, what did that chapter say? And you don't have a clue. It is really dense. But one thing that I've come in the very first row card, I think it's the first one, yeah, the first row card is a magician, and he talks about work as leisure. It's just your life. It's just living your life. And it's not adding anything or taking anything away in order to fit into some kind of mold. It's moving outside the molds and just being who you are. Zen has often looked at this severe sort of practice and stuff, but well, I don't know. I'm really optimistic about life because when you enter into the foundation or the base or the Dao, thy will be done sort of thing. It's works in grace and Paul too, right? I mean, it's something like that. We can't work our way there.
Speaker 1:
Living gracefully, perhaps is one way to think of it or living a
Speaker 2:
Life. And the moment itself is the grace. Just this moment is the grace and the practice is to say, oh, I know that. And the practice is to say, well, sometimes I'm there and sometimes I'm not. And just to be kind of honest with yourself and kind to yourself and grab hold of something and you defend yourself just like all of us do, and you say, oh, God, there I go again. Okay, I do that. Sometimes just even accepting that, and then you accepting self, you're accepting other, and just continue to move with that,
Speaker 1:
Right? Right.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
As most of us know, I think as everyone knows now, our world is in considerable need of healing, however you understand the word heal, and whether your man won in the recent election or loss, the need for healing still is there. And what does David have to offer, just to put it straightforwardly? What does Z have to offer toward the healing of the world? It's kind of a big question.
Speaker 2:
It's got a simple answer. Maybe I'm not separate. Even those people who I oppose politically, that's me.
Speaker 1:
Expand that a little bit if you would.
Speaker 2:
So we make our enemies and they cooperate because they give us of building blocks for our image of who they are. And so we hold them apart from us, and we say, there's the problem that's out there, and some enemies invite caricature better than others. And finally, we're all part of the same fabric. The fabric is seamless. And it doesn't mean that I accept everything that you do. It may mean that, well, in my life I will need to oppose that, but you're not my enemy. We're part of the same fabric. And that's really hard.
And even the change that happens within ourselves, we say, oh, there's this ideal out there, and I'm not that now. So you've separated yourself from yourself. And the healing that needs to happen is just to say, okay, there's only one life here. There's not two or three. And so we begin with meditation Koans, just as we notice our lives, to accept life as it comes to us and respond. Right, and respond. There's the classic thing. There's a child about to get run over for the bus. What do you do? Well, if you think about it, you grab the kid, grab from under the bus, and you're just part of the flow of things and you're making your responses. You just don't allow the bus to run over. You make your responses. And the less attached, the less thought that goes into that, the more effective actually we are. Our responses to, if we're certain that, oh, I better think about that. And if we're certain about our plans, our responses are less flexible, labile, and if we just allow ourselves to move with what's here, we are just a part of all that. And we'll scoop up the kid in front of the bus and never give it a thought.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it seems, and you may disagree, it seems like there are some situations where that works. There are other situations where planning, analysis, preparation beforehand,
Speaker 2:
What you have is this moment, and so I need to go to DC and be part of it. Comes be part of a demonstration. So you have this moment to make that choice. And you said, well, how am I going to get there? Well, I better, I'm going to go with some people, so I need to get those people together. And then they say, okay, we're going to take a bus and then bump. You just have this moment to make responses and something happens along the way. And you see somebody's packing Molotov cocktails, you say, oh, maybe I won't go.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah. You had mentioned earlier, David, of your interest in inner spiritual interfaith work. What's that all about?
Speaker 2:
I think spirit has moved in many different ways and different cultures. And Thich Nhat Hanh together with Thomas Merton and Thomas Merton says Thich Nhat is my brother. And I think Merton said something that he said something about being able to communicate with monks from other traditions better than from his own tradition. I think he said something like that. So from Mount Athos to China, to Japan, to India, there there's been a, this is what it is to be human, to be connected and interconnected. And zen is really just a practice really to help you realize that. And there are other practices, your practice of centering prayer, different kinds of meditation and rituals and the mass perhaps. So yet you one would be interested in that, I think. And as we become more and more aware of different cultures, we realize, oh, what I have is precious, but it's precious in the same way that X is precious to somebody from another tradition. And seems, and sometimes it gets controversial, but it seems to point to the same reality. And so you can look at parable. Go ahead. Yeah,
Speaker 1:
No, no, go ahead.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, you can look at like, go ahead, David. You can look at the parables of Jesus.
Yeah, yeah. And there's this great parable that's actually in the gospel of Thomas, which it is pretty well regarded as early in lots of genuine saying of Jesus in the gospel of Thomas. And it's presented a in words, just each verse is another word from Jesus. And there's one number, 97 is the parable of the woman with a jar. And he says, it goes something like this. He says, well, the kingdom of heaven is like a woman who's returning to a market with a jar full of grain. The jar is broken and she doesn't notice, and all of the grain runs out on her way home. She gets home, she looks in the jar and it's empty. The kingdom of heaven is like that. That's a koan.
Speaker 1:
Indeed. Indeed.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. What happens when all the things that you've gathered to say, this is myself, when it all runs out, what's left? Yeah.
Speaker 1:
No thing. No thing, no thing. You can help me with this, David. There's a scripture somewhere in the canonical gospels where Jesus said, unless you bring yourself to nothingness or no, you shall not enter the kingdom. Does that ring a bell at all, or am I making this up?
Speaker 2:
No, there's something that people quote often from Gospel Thomas. It's like that, but I don't know it. No, I don't know otherwise.
Speaker 1:
So is that the fact, the kingdom of heaven, I mean, this is my interpretation of that koan that you just cited is if you go looking for thingness, then you're going to miss it. It's not it. It's more in isness, if you will, than thingness. I don't know if that fits or not, but
Speaker 2:
Well, it is something like that. Once all the things you've believed in when they drop away and belief is a funny thing. You can believe that the one belief is a big religious belief, but all the other beliefs and far more pernicious, I think, is the belief that I'm like this and I'm not like that, and I'll never be happy. Those kinds of beliefs. And what happens when those just are gone, the bottom falls out of your jar and it's like, oh, there's just this. It's beautiful to look out over the mountains this morning, and I'm not sitting inside my problem. I'm just here and now. It's really nice. I like your shirt. Yeah,
Speaker 1:
Yeah. Well, David, as our time begins to wind down, anything that you want to share or leave us with?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so there's a koan I thought of as I was coming into this, and for me, it's sort of an interfaith koan. This is from Lin G who lived in the ninth century or eighth or ninth century China. And he says, there is a solitary brightness. It knows how to listen to the teachings, it understands the teachings, it knows how to teach. You are that solitary brightness. It's another sort of breakthrough koan. And Jesus put it like this. He said, you are the light of the world,
Speaker 1:
Not just me, but you too.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah. It's like someone says that to me and I go, well, you kind of look behind me and say, well, who are you talking to? Yeah. And not just me. The light of the world doesn't, the light of the world doesn't stop with one person. It doesn't stop with Jesus. It's just the light of the world, the solitary brightness.
Speaker 1:
Well, I think that is good wisdom to perhaps bring this to a close. I want to thank you very much. This has been a delightful coming home week for me personally. I wish you and Bluegrass Zen all the best as you continue to live out the zen that's coming alive in you. I'm going to obviously hold on to that little statement. That's something my take home message Zen comes alive in you.
Speaker 2:
That's the only place it could come alive.
Speaker 1:
Right, right, right. Well, David, again, thank you very much and for our listeners, I hope something was illuminating interesting, and you learn something today in closing. I wish you peace and I'll see you down the road.
Speaker 2:
Okay, lovely. Thank you, Ron.
Speaker 1:
And with that, this episode of All Things Contemplative comes to a close. I hope you found it interesting and informative and will join me for the next episode piece.