Carl set up the kind of framework in which we have our view of what has been developed in Japan, and now we're going to go to the Pacific. Does that make sense? Yes. Trust those of you who were here yesterday are now quite confused. In one sense, although I grant you there was more madness than necessary yesterday, there was a certain method to it. It was supposed to be slightly mad. I wanted to clear a case to get us away from the notion that Japanese Zen is merely the transmission of a pre-established religion from China to Japan, and then it continues

[01:06]

on in Japan. This is a model that I think many books have of it, and Zen itself likes to have it, of course, because it's a transmission from mind to mind, and so there's no difference between Japanese Zen and Chinese Zen. It's potentially the same. And whatever we may say about that essence, it may well be potentially the same. I wanted to clear a space so that we could think about Zen as a Japanese field, as the development of a Japanese religion. In order to do that, then, I had to problematize a lot of the models that we have, not just floating around in our heads, but in books as well, historiographic models of how Zen came to be. So I did, in effect, what I was trying to do, although we were jumping around so much because people were asking questions and I was responding and therefore going in different

[02:06]

directions, but basically I was trying to do a kind of, what you might call, counterclockwise narrative about Japanese history, starting with the modern-day Shōtoku as a denomination of Japanese Zen, and then trying to move back in history to how we got that model. And we don't have to, we can't, I don't think any of us want to go back over all that again, but basically my point was that the kind of Zen we have now, Shōtoku Zen, Rinzai Zen, is something that took many, many centuries to create. Different pieces of it were there at different times throughout Japanese history. Some quite early, for example, the division, the gradual division of Japanese Buddhism into different sectarian groups, goes back at least, say, to the 800s, and then it's

[03:09]

gradually different elements of that grouping, that is to say, institutional distinctions and intellectual distinctions and ritual distinctions and so on, these are gradually brought together. And then, quite late in this process, laymen are brought into this process of sectarian divisions, such that they become members of a church that had previously been simply a clerical distinction, institutional property distinction and so on. And now you have congregations of Shōtoku Zen believers, Rinzai Zen believers, and all the other denominations of Japanese Buddhism. So that was my basis, the basic thing I wanted to do was to suggest to you that then, as we come to know it as a particular school, and Shōtoku Zen, Rinzai Zen, these are the product of many, many centuries of gradual, different divisions. Okay? With that?

[04:10]

Yeah? One of the questions I would make a little bit is, in terms of Shōtoku Zen, I think that I'm wondering that, what is the use of the force of marriage? Have they been, at the monastery, have they been fostered in the first instance of the clans that are still connected to Shōtoku Zen, and in order to break the power of the monastery, for example, the monastery in Shōtoku Zen has been denied? Is that after this? I haven't heard that one before. The whole-scale marrying of priests is a very modern phenomenon. It really begins in the 19th century and really takes off in the 20th. Prior to that, in principle, Japanese monks, like monks everywhere in Buddhism, were supposed to have been celibate. Now, like monks everywhere, they always had something on the side. I mean, some of them did. And there were forms of Buddhism, as there have been in other Buddhist countries, that

[05:24]

allowed for a kind of middle ground between the laymen and the monks. This was done in various ways, but there were, from early on in Japanese Buddhist history, there were figures who represented a kind of go-between between strict monastic institutions and celibacy and the ordinary lay life. Sometimes these people are called shamis. This is one version of it, anyway. Shami comes from the word shamanera. These are people who take, in the traditional setup of the founder, there were laymen and there were monks, and then there was shamanera. These are people who took provisional vows. They're not strict, they're just fiends. But they took provisional vows, and so they represented a kind of liminal status between

[06:24]

monks and laymen. And this became, typically this was seen in principle as a temporary status, like a novitiate, from which you would then graduate into the bhikshu, or monk, status. But it also became a lifetime calling, you might say, or a situation for many people. And so, these people had some greater freedom from the rules, the 250 rules about bhikshus that they saw in many cities, like celibacy. Now, in principle, the rules for the shamanera are supposed to include celibacy, but in one way, the prejudice is another thing. There are also a class of people, this is just, this is not a Buddhist literal distinction, but a cultural, a social distinction.

[07:26]

It means a saint, literally, or a holy man. But it is often applied to a class of semi-clerics. Sometimes they've taken the full vow, sometimes they haven't. But they are religious teachers who specialize in practices outside of the establishment institutions, the monastery, of two sorts. Some of them are contemplative, who live alone or in small groups, but do not, are not directly associated with any particular monastic establishment. You could be like Miphas in the mountains, and famous contemplative yogis. Others were like popular teachers, who went among the public, spreading forms of Buddhism accessible to people. And these people also would sometimes be married, and sometimes not.

[08:29]

Earlier it was illegal for people to be married. There have been, and there have not appeared, attempts to prevent the proliferation of this type of Buddhist, I don't know what you would call it, Buddhist cleric in some sense, who is operating outside the institution. They were seen as a threat to the powers of the government, controlling the Buddhist community. So there were prohibitions against this type of Buddhist preaching, and especially organizing, proselytizing and organizing the community. These people, we have evidence of them. The fact that we have prescriptions against them says that we have them, all the way back in the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 18th centuries. They become increasingly prominent during the Heian period, the 300-1200s, and are especially

[09:32]

known for the preaching of the teachings of Lotus Sutra, and even more prominently faith in the Buddha, Arjuna, and the Egyptian spirit. It's often said that they are the precursors in new styles of popular Buddhism that is especially fabulous about the subsequent Kamakura period in the beginning of the 1200s. So you have the, in answer to your question, you have the wholesale, official, public marrying of regularly ordained Buddhist priests, who is very modern. But the history of such people, such practices, is quite old. Yes? I think, taking a little bit of the history of our priesthood, there are 15 people, and it seems to me that one of the key facts in understanding how we got from 215 to 15

[10:34]

is that in China and Japan, the majority of people, particularly in China, as I understand it, the majority of people just did this novice ordination with 10 vows, and never went off and became fully ordained Buddhists. It's sort of a rarity in China. I think my question is the same. What is your take on that? I think it's fair to say that the leaders of the Buddhist Sangha have always taken a Buddhist image of the people. Now, of course, we don't know what that individual is, but it seems to have been considered quite unusual for someone to put himself up as a Buddhist leader without having taken that speech. There's a much stricter sense of the people.

[11:36]

And the notion that you could be a Buddhist cleric and have only taken the Bodhisattva precepts, for example, never occurred to me. The Bodhisattva precepts were considered to be on top of, they were for both monks and laymen. But if you were a monk, you were so because you took the precepts. It doesn't follow that you kept them, but... Yeah, well, I was just trying to figure out how Dogen sort of, because Dogen has it right in front of him, he's 16, and says he got them from China, from people who never took the full precepts. And that's been interesting to me because it was a kind of a radical redistribution. And he's from Yukon, and his work is of this, what he says, where he got them at the end He says... And does he go on to say that most people were like that in China?

[12:43]

He has been given from monks and laypeople alike. And as I say, I was just trying to figure out how did he get there? And it seems to me that the possibility was that it was because the common practice in China was just to take ten. Because once you took the ten and were a novice, then you were free from taxation and free from curvy labor, and there wasn't such an intention to go on and do the full ten. So this is, bear in mind, a little different subject from the question of marrying. Because those people were also supposed to be celibate, in principle. The ten, I mean, the sixteen are a combination of ten and three and two. And the ten are the bodhisattvas, what they call the majors of the bodhisattvas, from And monks and laymen both took those. But I think it's fair to say, I mean, there may have been exceptions, but people who were

[14:02]

considered monks in China also took those 250 bodhisattvas. What happens, one of the things that makes it so complicated is that in Japan, the founder of Tendai, Faisho, whom we talked about last time, the most revolutionary thing he did, and it contributed mightily to the development then of the notion of sectarian differences within Japanese Buddhism, he introduced the notion that according to his Tendai, you could be a monk without taking the 250 bodhisattvas. You could take the ten major precepts and 48 minor precepts of the texts that had been written in China back in the 1640s, neta brahma precepts. And he said that it was Hinayana practice to take the 250 precepts, and in the authentic

[15:02]

Mahayana tradition, you would not take those anymore. You would take the bodhisattva precepts instead. And that was a major, major controversy then around 800 years of Japanese Buddhism. And eventually, after his death, the government acknowledged, recognized this possibility, that they would recognize monks who had only taken the Holy Buddha precepts as monks, and the rest of the order was very upset about this. So that by the time Dogen comes along, now 400 years later, Tendai has its own ordination practices separate from the rest of the Buddhist community. So you could be a Tendai monk and the other Buddhists would say you're not a monk. And similarly, you could be a Tendai monk and look down your nose at the rest of the Buddhist sects, and you'd still need the 250 precepts. They're stuck back in the Hinayana.

[16:02]

And you can see how here you have a very fractal ritual distinction between at least Tendai and other orders. And the same thing, in a different form, took place within Shingon. Shingon Buddhists continued to take the full precepts, but they added on top of that initiations into Esoteric Buddhism. And if you didn't have those, you could not be a Shingon. You couldn't study Shingon. And that meant you couldn't live in Shingon as a teacher. So here again, you have a ritual separation of Shingon from other forms of Buddhism. So you can see, here's one of the major features that is feeding into the Plain Denomination division, where you have ritual distinction. He can be a, and she can be a. And that's unusual. China didn't have this type of thing. Uh, there's... ... ...

[17:09]

But you also didn't give other people a chance to go off in their own direction. For you to say now, let's just think it was... ... I think we can arrange for both, but usually we could just do this. We don't need more than this. We have time for questions. Okay. What I wanted to do today, actually I wanted to do it last time, but because of him... ... I didn't do it. And that was to shift from the sort of institutional talk, largely institutional and historical talk that we did last time. To talk more about ideas. The ideas of Japanese Buddhism that seem to me govern the way in which the founding of Zen in Japan as an intellectual possibility, as a religious possibility, gets shaped.

[18:31]

And I talked last time, just at the end of the hour, about the fact that Japanese Buddhism, Japanese Zen, actually was known in Japan well before we think it was transmitted. Remember I said that thing about how it was actually, in effect, both more and less to the transmission of Zen to Japan than we usually think. Less in the sense that it's not that there was a flourishing Zen school in China that wasn't transmitted for 400 years. And then pop, suddenly it came in around 1200. But there's less Zen in China than we usually think. That is to say, there are Zen books, there are Zen rhetoric, and so on. But there isn't a separate institution of Zen until much later than we usually think. At the same time, there's more in Japan in the sense that those books and that rhetoric was known in Japan from very early on, from its origin, around 800 years.

[19:36]

Okay. It was known within the context of what you might call the mainstream of Japanese Buddhism during the Heian period. And that mainstream is provided by the Tendai system, introduced by the man we saw last time, Saicho. And remember I said Saicho came back from China and said that he had four lineages. He had Tendai, he had Esoteric, with a name called Mikkyo in Japan, he had Zen, and he had Vinaya. And his form of Tendai, different from Chinese Tendai in that it seeks to embrace all four in some synthesis that he himself never created. Saicho died without having created a Tendai system. But his followers went to work to try to build a Catholic system of Buddhism

[20:41]

based on the Lotus Sutra and the Chinese Tendai doctrine that would embrace all the different aspects of the Buddhism that Saicho claimed to have inherited. And this system is primarily, although it has Zen and Vinaya built into it, and they're important elements which we'll see in our story later on, this system is primarily Tendai doctrine, scholastic doctrine and practices, with Esoteric Buddhism on top of it. And the system as a whole is sometimes called Tai Mikkyo, Tai from Tendai, Mikkyo from Esoteric Buddhism. Tai Mikkyo system is sometimes also called Ten Mikkyo system.

[21:45]

Ten Mikkyo, Ten means Esoteric Buddhism. Which is Tendai in this case, and Esoteric Buddhism. Now, the system has, it's based on the doctrine of the Lotus Sutra, the one vehicle. So it tries to embrace all of Buddhism, accounts for all of Buddhism. And it's done so in a specific education for scholasticism by ranking them. And Tendai itself had a system of four basic levels, of types of Buddhism. So down here you have Shinayana. In effect, I mean, that's what Tendai is talking about. You've got Shinayana Buddhism. Then you've got a kind of provisional, what is sometimes called Mahayana Buddhism. Then you've got a, what, full Mahayana Buddhism. And up here, in this system, you've got Esoteric Buddhism.

[22:51]

So for example, among the people who work in this kind of system, they would say, here is all the Buddhism before the Lotus Sutra. They would say, Buddhism does not seek to make Buddhism. That's the nature of the system. These are people who seek to make Buddhism. These kinds of Buddhism, it does not acknowledge that everyone should have as a goal becoming a Buddhist. This is a Buddhism for the prophets, for the arhats. Then you've got a kind of Buddhism, and this is it, of the Bodhisattva, who seeks to become a Buddhist. That's kind of provisional Mahayana. Then you've got a kind of Buddhism here, of the princess. Now what is that Bodhisattva-princess-princess? This is a long theological debate, worked out in China, by a Chinese company in Japan, which accepted that Mahayana can be divided into two levels. The type that starts from the assumption that we are not Buddha-men,

[23:57]

and gives us the Bodhisattva path by which we could become Buddha. That's one style of Mahayana. The Bodhisattva vehicle. And then, a style, caught in the second half of the Meiji system, that emphasizes, in the 40th century, comes right back to many other texts, that emphasizes the identity of the individual practitioner and the Buddhist. Styles of Mahayana that emphasize we all have a bigger nature, and that the practice of Buddhism is to realize that Buddhism, to find it, and put it into practice. More often later in life. And that was considered the full Mahayana. That is, in effect, traditional Tendai style. In Tendai, we represent the highest form, the full Mahayana form. And we have what's called the complete teaching. And we have to study and practice,

[24:58]

and practice based on identity, and practitioner, and Buddha. So that is the style of Taijutsu, that is, the extraterrestrial. On top of that, in this kind of principle, was what is often called, in Tendai dogmatic, Tanju. Tanju means, seeing the mind. Now, this is a hermeneutical technique used by the Tendai system in China. It's saying, okay, here's your theory, what do you do about it? In other words, how do you use the text as a practitioner, and not as a philosopher? What do the various theories of Buddhism tell you about what you ought to do? And this way of reading things,

[25:59]

where the Tendai philosophers will give you all the different systems, or outline what it means for an ordinary person to be a Buddha, and then they say, now let's take the perspective of practice. What kind of practice did you do? That type of shift in perspective. That, in this kind of synthesis, that was taken as the last level, the highest level. In other words, instead of taking it simply as asking another kind of question, it says, this is the highest perspective. The perspective of that takes for granted that we are all Buddhists, and looks at how you express that, what you do about it. In Japanese Tendai, in the synthesis that was created in Japan, that way of thinking, that is to say, how do you look at the mind, that became identified as the effective way of practice. There weren't individual Tendai, but by this time, there's a ten, a synthesis. So in traditional Tendai, this would mean,

[27:01]

and this term Tendai, traditional Tendai, the Tendai practices of the four Samadhi forms, that is to say, different types of contemplative practices that you do to realize the Tendai doctrine. In Japanese Tendai, they maintain this, but they also added that all the practices that have come into India, that have come from India to China, after the time of the Tendai system as it seems, we're talking about, in the 7th and 8th century. The practices especially in the freemen, were fast. What are the three karmas? Basically, there are three different karmas. You have to understand the three karmas. What are the three karmas that we give to ourselves? Those are the three poisons. Body, speech, and mind.

[28:05]

We have three types of actions. Body, speech, and mind. Now, in the esoteric tradition, those, as is so often done, with human qualities or human activities, they just flip over and leave the qualities or activities of a creature. So that, and they're called in the three mysteries of Buddhism, that the Buddha also engages in body, bodily actions, speech, and thoughts. And our job, if we are identified with a creature, is to perform the Buddha act, as opposed to a human act. And we are acting in the Buddha act. And how do we do that? We do it through ritual means. We have to observe ritual means. In Buddhism, we have to do it this way. We don't do it this way. So, for the body then, mudra, right? These are all familiar to us.

[29:11]

They've all become familiar to us, haven't they? From Japanese Buddhism, or from Tibetan Buddhism. I think it's also from Tibetan Buddhism. Mudra are gestures, and physical, positive gestures. They range from asana, that is to say, physical, positive gestures, to, as I said, the gigantic position, or human position, and so on. Here is a more famous one, especially if you have an exercise position, it's called a hand gesture. Physically symbolize the way that you can put it in your own body, or with your own body, that is the physical body. Okay? And then, speech, or it is mantra. And in fact, as you can see, the human is called the mantra yama, the vehicle of consciousness, and that's his feet are his feet. So,

[30:11]

feet, that feet position, feet position, is important. And finally, his mind is especially mandala, passive. Mandala means, as you know, it's like the Tibetan concept, that is to say, visual representation of the feet. To see them internalize, you need this technique. You use various kinds of meditation techniques to be able to visualize, internally visualize, the doctor's position. And then, move about in them, and then, by yourself, you figure in the, in the, pantheon, in the, realm, to be able to move about in them. And those two kinds of very technical practices that ordinary people don't do. And this is going to be associated with

[31:15]

this highest form of Tendon. So that's the system, a very arcane, complex kind of system, which I think it's fair to say, in and of itself, left alone like this, is really limited to a very small elite circle of people who are professionals at doing this. That's the system that's in place as, you might say, the major orthodoxy of Japanese Buddhism throughout the Heian period. Questions about that? Did you? Is yoga, in line with yoga, as a practice of that kind? I'm sorry? Yoga. Yoga? What do you mean by yoga? Posture, asana. Would that be a practice of the body? Hatha yoga. Hatha yoga. Yeah. Yeah. Those would be,

[32:15]

those would be associated with the body. Yeah. On the one hand, it seems, and here was an approach that tried to form a unity between the theory and the practice. Absolutely. And, so there's one question in terms of, I've had an unanswerable question about whether this is considered or not in trying to do that. But, another question is, can you relate to this at all in terms of modern kinds of epistemological methods of trying to understand reality, or is it so far separate from kind of modern philosophical questions of how we try to understand or appropriate reality, or is it far removed from that in terms of trying to understand it? Is that too... Well, I'm trying to think

[33:16]

what it is that is there one modern way of trying to understand appropriate reality? There's not one, but it certainly has a lot of epistemology built into it, Buddhism. Systematic philosophy has tons of epistemology. In fact, the process of how this becomes an open world, and so on. I might say, like, is there a rational element in terms of the system in relationship to and attempt to understand ourselves in relationship to reality? A way of mediating the world. Anyone want to jump in? To me, it's a highly, highly rationalized system, depending on what you mean by reason, maybe it's, in some sense,

[34:17]

a medieval system, and so you may find it somehow failing to take seriously some modern or post-modern doubts about the constructed nature of knowledge and so on, but I'm not sure that's what we're trying to get at. It's a very highly rationalized system that seeks to combine theory and practice and it's and it has built within it the possibility of critiquing, say, some of the things that you might find as merely medieval to epistemological means. In other words, you can say, well, what are the bridges in the pantheon, in the mandala? Well, they're actually conjectures. You know, this whole thing is ikaya, so all a set of techniques nearby that are therapeutic, but they're not absolutely descriptive

[35:18]

of reality. I don't know if there's a discursive question you're wondering about. There are, but there's also like an element of how much you try to remove I don't know, kind of ideological aspects of any particular system that well, I'll have to think about it. I'm not making myself clear, so I don't know. We're together on that. Yeah? Well, I don't know how far I'm starting over, it's just another way to come at it is to look at how we view knowledge now and compare it to this and what we see and what we talk to these people this kind of technology today. You know, mostly what we rely on is people who have a special way of having a community about stuff. They don't have this incredible technology for the ordinary

[36:20]

people understated by the current technology. So, to some extent people who were keen in doing that kind of stuff were probably drooling about it in their rooms, but then they went out and maybe got together and put it all where it was. They did all this stuff, and this is important to worry about it now. Yeah? Well, I think in a sense we view all those practices ourselves daily here at the think tank. We view these months and months in a way so it's like there's a state of mind that transcends that model. It's like at some point it drops away and you are not doing your business. So that's

[37:20]

how I think it relates to practice. If that's what you're asking. I don't think it's some kind of strange weird kind of thing that people do in Shangri-La or something like that. Somebody does have a direct application to Shangri-La in a real way. Well, you put a hand to the museum and you say, I'm sorry, mandala. I think service is a mandala. I think service is the actual living mandala that we participate in with our bodies every day. The position of the priest in relationship to the congregation of Sangha is sort of like Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha all being playing out in a kind of human mandala system that's my personal participation in. Yeah, I mean, we have a lot, but we can talk about it. Yes. And I hope we'll get the relationship

[38:22]

of this examined. I was thinking you would go. Let's go then. So, one of the things you should understand historically and if there is, you actually are the structuring relationship of all this system is as these years and centuries pass, this is tendency, the focus of industry in this system is increasingly on this top point. In other words, it's a single systematic whole as I see it, but increasingly increasingly on top of the existing Japanese religious theology. On this issue of communism, what do we do about it? What do we do? And, as you may well imagine, because this system had, for its practice, a highly technical kind of

[39:22]

technology in the colony. Alternatives, alternative ways of putting into practice the identity of the human in the system became a practice. And one way of understanding what happens in what they call the new Kamakura Buddhism that includes Zen Buddhism, the kind of Buddhism that starts to become increasingly important in the 12th and 15th centuries, is looking for ways to redefine this, and make it more accessible to simplify it, and to make it more practical, be a practical form of non-protection. So, we begin to focus, then, on various Buddhist techniques and technologies that

[40:24]

will, through which you can reach out to people, and people can experience this sense of being a Buddha altogether. The most famous, of course, is the Pure Land teaching. The Pure Land teachings have a particular style. They start from what seems like the opposite premise, namely, the impossibility of becoming a Buddha. That's where, that's like Mott's quote, the last page of his book. They start from saying, in effect, they draw a sharp distinction between all their philosophy and practice. And they say, look at the opposite premise. People are not getting anything out of it. They're going to, I mean, you've got a judicial mumbo-jumbo, you've got all sorts of stuff like that that are enticing philosophies that they think are just ridiculous. And

[41:24]

they start from the opposite premise and they draw a sharp distinction between all their philosophy and practice. And draw a sharp distinction between all their philosophy and their practice. They draw a sharp all their philosophy and practice. And they draw a sharp distinction between their practice and their practice. They draw a sharp distinction all their practice and their techniques, and it doesn't even require ordinary goodness. All it requires is surrender. Surrender

[42:28]

of that self that is separate from the good self. And you are with the good self. And the surrender is the state. You can see how structurally, even though they start on the premise of consistency, they're really looking for a practice. See if you can surrender the sense of yourself that you are not with them, that you are not safe, that you need help. Give that up, and you're in the good. So a whole section of theology developed around this is a very new mode of practice formed for ordinary people because now you can really think of it like they're in that moment. You call them a good self. And they use a simple mantra, dominate on the indifference, as the device for the actual practice. It's basically the same way as a practice. There is a practice, but the practice that they

[43:30]

use is a different one. The practice of surrender is a different one. Yes, ma'am? Well, I think it's interesting. I mean, it's a practice that you use again, but it might be that you didn't do that. Of course. And that's the work that you do. Yes, of course. I think everybody's got to do it. So there was... Somehow, under terms of the fact that we don't need to. Although there are some cases in Texas that we didn't do that in Texas, and I didn't do it in his life at all, and that we actually do have to be reborn in some other location. Right. In order to communicate. Society is, in effect, if you have faith, it's a kind of second house. Whether you can obtain the trinity in this body, in this place, the Sahara world, where you have to go through the land of being dead and the rest, after death. But in either case, and then psychologically, it has the same power. That is to say, what they're looking for is confirmation that we are not a part of it.

[44:35]

And if you have that confirmation, you can live in... You have that big... You can live in a place that hasn't been created. Even if you're not quite getting a piece of it in this life. And that becomes an interesting kind of shift. You'll see also in another form, the second life, of what we'll call the murder, the curse. And this is much famous in the Nishida school, but we see in other reformed versions of Tendai. Where faith in the Lotus Sutra will give you sanctification. In effect, the power of the Lotus Sutra reflects that if you have faith in it, even if you don't understand it, and the philosophy of the Lotus Sutra and the Lotus Sutra in the Nishida school, faith that the eternal body of that individual, which is taught in the second half of the Lotus Sutra, in fact it's just given to you.

[45:40]

If that eternal body of the Lotus Sutra has stuck in you, you can possibly fit in this realm, and you can participate in the enlightenment of that body. Through faith in the Lotus Sutra. And your practice now becomes not trying to save yourself, but celebrating the fruit of stuck in you and having saved us all through the game of life. By spreading the Lotus Sutra. By worshiping the Lotus Sutra. By chanting the title of the Lotus Sutra. Again, a simple mantra that is expressive of your conviction that you have already been saved. That you are a different kind of individual. So this is an elaborate set of theology and issues like, what is the Pure Land? And how is it related to this world? It's associated with all the different philosophies.

[46:42]

That is to say, they draw on different aspects. If someone had the Odishada philosophy, and the Indian philosophy, there's a lot of different stuff going on in the technical Pure Land theology. But, in addition to that, you might say, while the monks are trying to work out a system, they are also telling people, you can be a Pure Land Buddhist, whether you're a monk or a layman. Whether you're a sinner or a saint. And in fact, this is especially good for sinners. What is interesting to me about Indian Buddhism is that, based on the Lotus Sutra, it's a very inclusive thing that takes about one year. So anything can be included in all of that. And the way that it expresses itself, again, is very systematic and very strict training. And it's interesting to me that that would be the case when it's based on, theoretically, a very inclusive kind of thing.

[47:45]

Yeah, well, a lot depends on how you read the Lotus Sutra. You can read the Lotus Sutra as saying, we're all one vehicle. But then you can also read the Lotus Sutra as saying, and those people who understand the one vehicle are completely different from those who don't. And you see then, and the people who are interested in this, comes in approach to Buddhism, practice approach to Buddhism, tend to use the Lotus Sutra as a tool. That is to say, that the main thrust of the Lotus Sutra is to make an expression to those people who understand the Buddha's true message, and those who are taught in the Lotus Sutra, and those who don't. And the Lotus Sutra itself is a highly paranoid text, right? It's always talking about those people who slander us, those people who reject us, right? Those people who say that we're heretics and so on. Ignore them. They will rot in hell, trust me. And you just go ahead with the Lotus Sutra

[48:49]

in the face of all this anti-Lotus Sutra stuff that you will be hearing. So this is a text that, while it says we're all one vehicle, is very aware of being one vehicle by itself over against all the people who had many vehicles. And the theology also has room for both sides. If you look at the classical Tendai view of the Lotus Sutra, it really has two sides. And you can see, this is a very important point for understanding why the Lotus Sutra is so important for the development of Buddhism in Japan, and including Zen. And that is the famous parable of the cart in the Lotus Sutra, right? Where a guy's house is burning, remembering he wants to get his kids out. And so he gives that, he lies to them and says, I've got toys I can get for you, right? And so they run out. And he gives them different kinds of, he promises them different kinds of toys according to what he knows they like to get them out.

[49:50]

He's got two kids in it. So he gets all three out. This refers to the different vehicles. Travelling vehicles, that's what he refers to as vehicles, right? Carts, right? He's in car mode. Okay, and then when they get out there, of course, he didn't have any carts, but he's a rich guy, and so he buys them this beautiful big cart, right? And they all love it. And then the theologians say, are there four carts in this story or are there three? Is the beautiful big cart that he gave them actually the best, the Bodhisattva cart that he promised to one of his kids? Or is it not? And the Ten Guides tradition says, it's not. It's the Buddha vehicle. Not the Bodhisattva vehicle. Remembering that ransom scheme, right? The Bodhisattva vehicle is considered a lesser form of Mahayana. And there's something called the Buddha vehicle, which was not imagined actually in India, but was developed by theologians of the later future in science. And it's become in Kedam Buddhism, or Huayen Buddhism, and in Shantide Buddhism,

[50:51]

in Shaan Buddhism, all of them want to be the Buddha vehicle. Now, and that Buddha vehicle is said to be the sudden vehicle. Sudden in the sense that it's not changing a person from a human to a Buddha. It's changing a Buddha from a human to a Buddha. In other words, it's based on the identity of the Buddha vehicle. And the other thing about the E.T.M. thing, it's the most obvious manifestation of it. It's the most reasonable to see E.T.M. take these books in America to say, you know, chant this mantra and you can have what you want, instead of doing the heuristic thing. And I always look down on it in sort of a sentimental way. And... Yeah, all middle class people are supposed to look down on it. Yeah, right. And right. And somebody... Right, right. Somebody made a comment the other day, that the Lotus Sutra includes, I haven't read it all, but Lotus Sutra includes the idea that

[51:53]

by drawing, you can draw people in by promising them worldly benefits between the practice within, as they fit in, they begin to sort of, their understanding that it's been, yes, in my conversations with people who have been doing this chanting practice day in and day out, year after year after year, that seems to be the case, that some of that stuff cooked off, it's like some of it cooked off after years of being taught now. Yeah, it's... It allows us now to see that they're authentically good. But you know, in the process of doing that, we are in effect denying part of the, one possible meaning of their faith. If you really have faith, that you are identical with the Big Bang, why not go for worldly benefits? I mean, that's what the Calvinists say. Salvation is not our issue. It's how we live in the world.

[52:53]

Whereas you would like them to say, well, we're not really good at the other things, that's the beauty of practicing. You want to step back a little bit from that extreme form of what you might call Protestant faith, the denial of worth. But if you take that really seriously, and you're living in faith, there's no need to improve yourself. Seriously. Except when you see yourself the way you are. Why not go to rest here after you rest there? From that religious point of view. Do you also have the Calvinist aspect, that you can't be absolutely a physical sinner, however, to get away with it? There's certainly, of course, the assumption that someone who has real faith will not say, I'm raising in paganism. Yeah, I'd be able to serve as a patrician to Calvin. I don't think he'd want to. Okay, well, that was just provocative. And they're based on very different sets of assumptions.

[53:59]

The only basis of sensing a member of his soul is that it embodies the essence of all existence. I mean, it embodies the doctrine of emptiness, and being weak, and all those things. So, it's actually a very sophisticated practice in its essence. It's not a very minded practice. Certainly it can be, depending upon who's interpreting it. Right, but I mean, I think Nietzsche-Limm's idea behind it was a very sophisticated practice. Nietzsche-Limm was a highly sophisticated theologian, actually. But here again, he's the defender of the deeper meanings of these practices. And I'm trying to emphasize the degree to which practices which were quite sophisticated, you know, in theological terms, made Lutheran Buddhist practice accessible to people in ways that it hadn't been in a bunch. It didn't have to match the sophisticated theology. Yeah, I'm just thinking that maybe the idea, even though the way it's been brought to you,

[55:01]

I think it's like the idea of, you know, joking about non-religious or religious practices, that you could actually, if you actually manifest this practice, that there would be a lot deeper if that was to happen than just, you know, reading the law. It's like, if there was that idea behind it. Yeah, the thing that I was trying to make is that the people who I have met who have been doing this year after year after year, have an understanding, I think, of practice that I respect and can't just dismiss. Okay, let's all agree that we justified those learned practices. And let me add one other passage. This is usually, this is not, there's a Binia movement that takes place

[56:01]

at the end of the Heian period and throughout the Kamakura period, alongside these very kind of popular movements. And usually it's understood to mean simply an attempt to reform the monastery, that is, let's get back to basic practice, a conservative kind of religiosity. Okay, let's get back to speaking at the end of the 15th century. But in fact, if you look at the Binia teachers, they are very often, there is that element, right? But they are very often doing something with Binia that is akin to what the still and unnoticed reformers were doing, namely, they're taking it out into the streets by saying, to take ordination in Buddhism, give yourself salvation. To go through the ritual practices of initiation gives itself to be saved. In other words, it's not that you get initiated into something and then it works again. You are already a Buddhist. All you need to do is confirm that,

[57:03]

ritually confirm that, through undergoing right ordination, initiation, whatever. And so you have a movement of people who are giving ritual practices of what were originally monastic ritual practices, and taking them out to the public and saying, do this ritual practice. And they would have mass initiation meetings. They'd ride into town and they'd set up a meeting and they'd say, look, everybody's going to get initiated into Buddhism. Everyone's going to be a Buddhist. And we'll make a record of that and we'll give you a certificate of that. And you simply worship the certificate. And as a symbol of your having been saved. So similar kind of thing going on. So all of these, my point is, all of what you're saying is the reason whereby

[58:04]

Buddhism is looking for ways to practice what Buddhism calls Buddha practice. Which we do. Not image practice, but Buddha practice. Ways in which you can understand the Buddhist life, typically in a rather simple form, but then perform a practice. And the practice being expressive of the, your condition of your Buddhism. When you're practicing for the popular women's practice and ordination, does that occur before Keizan? Or is it really Keizan later? Keizan later, but it's going on from the end of the 12th century. This is not just today, but it's going on within the different schools. It's going on at Kofu Jigme. The so-called southern Jigme species. It's centered at Kofu Jigme, which is a yoga Tata school. It's going on in what's called the northern Jigme region in Tokyo. It's about ten by nine. It's going on about ten on nights.

[59:06]

There's a lot of different people using it's name and it's practice. Yes. 12th century. Before Dogen, and then continuing on through his life. Okay, I was just going to mention another alternative which is Zen. That's good. And then we've got Zen. All together. A simple meditation practice on the spirit of meditation. We'll do that after the break. Just say five and we'll do it in ten. What? No,

[60:32]

no. Yeah.

[60:47]

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