Now a kind of a grandfather from many Zen groups and many other students who are now teachers and founder of Zen Peacemaker Warder. And he's had some new ideas traveling around the country and directed everyone to give your full attention It was a great Dharma teacher. Thank you. We didn't have good night. Thank you. Thank you for having me. And thank you. If we talk about grandparents, we've got to talk about the Hartmans. And I heard about, I just heard about your exploits when I grew up in the Dharma, my Zuni Roshi. talked about how in Zen we have to bust down the walls.

[01:05]

And I heard that Lou just did similar things. Yeah, it's a young age to start doing that kind of thing. So, it's been a few years since I've been here, I'd say. One of the good things about our age is we forget a lot. But what would you say? Two years? Three years? I don't know. Been a while. Yeah, you've probably heard that a lot of these old Zen teachers talk about the importance of living in the now. And I realized as I got older that's because they can't remember anything else. Right? Then it became sort of esoteric. Okay, let me just place myself.

[02:16]

Who's heard me talk before? So fair amount haven't. I'll spend just a few minutes talking about my beginnings. Poor Genki. Let me introduce Sensei Genki Khan, who used to be a magician. 30 years ago, and who is now sort of taking over my position within the Peacemakers. So part of the trip is for him to get introduced to everybody. So he... I just sort of went on the... You're going to hear some repeat, because we're just... Okay.

[03:27]

Anyway, in the beginnings... You all know that, or some of you know, you've read Dogen Zengi's Fukanza Zengi, and in there, there's a phrase, and there are further ramifications, you know that line? There's something happens that you get, and then it says, and there are, depends on the translation, and there are further ramifications or implications, something like that. And I also did a lot of colon study, and one of the My more recent interest in Coen's is Coen's from the Coen Brothers. I don't know how many of you have seen The Big Lebowski. How many have seen The Big Lebowski? It's a very important movie. A very important movie. There's a lot of zen in it. And it's by the Coen Brothers and it's about to do it. But... But there's a, something happens, and the dude says, new shit has come to light.

[04:40]

That's a commentary on Stogan's works of, and there were further ramifications, but also that this is a tie of new, so it's a tie of new things coming to light. There was even a whole book that started, it's called the Torah. Sometimes translated as Bible, the first word in Hebrew is Bereshit, in the beginning. So that's, new shit has come to light. That is, in the beginning, stuff, and it wound up being light. So that gives you a flavor of what my life has been about. That's the, in the beginnings. I was born in Brooklyn, New York. My family was somewhat like Lou Hartman.

[05:40]

They were pretty much communists. I grew up in a very socialist arena. Jewish socialism. And 50 years ago, I got involved in Zen. It was readings, 58. And I've been involved in Zen ever since. But when I, at some point, after I had Dharmatransmission, it became clear to me that my initial upbringing had a big effect and I wound up working in what we call socially engaged Buddhism.

[06:45]

And that came out of a moment that sort of led my unfolding after receiving Dharma Transmission. But there was something that happened in which I felt the hungry spirits. Hungry ghosts, as for those who know very kind of know. we translate as gate of sweet nectar. Right, right, right. So I felt, I experienced all of the hungry ghosts. And I experienced them as who I am and what I am.

[07:50]

And out of that experience, this was like 1975, came a vow to try to feed all of the hungry spirits and all of the... Until that time, I had pretty much decided that my life was going to be within the Zen Center of Los Angeles and within a Zendo and Temple structure. After that, I decided I wanted to work in all of society and bring work. For me, the feeding of the hungry spirits was the bringing of the Bodhi Mind. I mean, that's what Katnuma says. But that's the Buddhist communion, the feeding of the Bodhi Mind, the awakening of that mind. So anyway, that... It led me to want to work in various aspects of our society and to say, what are the forms?

[08:56]

What's the equivalent of seshin within the business world, within the social action world, within the entertainment world, within the sports world? What's the equivalent of the seated posture? What's the equivalent of the mudra? What's the equivalent of the various upayas? What are the upayas in all these different fields? So, with that experience and also with the conditioning of my upbringing, I wound up working a lot more in the world of social action, but also in business. Not so much in the world of sports or entertainment, but in the world of clowning. I became a clown also, and I Don't have my nose. This morning I met with... Reb Anderson. Here, did we use titles? Is it Roshi Reb Anderson?

[09:58]

Or is it Reb? So anyway, we met with Reb, and I know that he needed my nose, so I gave him my clown nose. And I forgot to get another one. I brought a few in case I... ran into somebody like Rep and Todd. That's one of the hungry spirits, huh? So I forgot my, I don't have my nose, but I do that kind of thing. Let's see. And my teacher is the coordinator for the Clowns Without Borders. We work in refugee camps with kids. At any rate. So as I said, I looked for different upayas, and that's led me to do different things, like retreats living in the streets, retreats in Auschwitz.

[11:11]

working in refugee camps, starting working with the homeless, but working holistically and looking for what are the forms in those worlds which would help us fall into the realization and actualization of the oneness of life and the interconnectedness of life. There's everything that has informed my work has been how do we help each other realize that interconnectedness of life and oneness of life. Because I feel that the reduction of suffering and compassion will arise out of that. And that's, I look for various ways and forms for us to practice in these things. various ways. I'm rambling a little and then I'm going to ask a question so we can get into more detail.

[12:21]

And one of the works that I feel very good about is something we did in the inner city in Yakus and Blanche. It was quite a... Steve had just mentioned that we met at that meeting in Rochester. That was 95. Or 6. It was a little after Roshita. And right after that meeting, Blanche visited in Yonkers. So that's a little coincidence. And that was work to help the folks of that community, the whole homeless, and not just homeless, but poor folk, but not just poor folk, because some of the folks that we worked with were making a lot of money as drug dealers, much more money than they did when they came to work with us.

[13:30]

But these were folks that wanted to get out of that kind of life into a different kind of life. So we were working with them, but also looking for how do you do that kind of work in a way which also helps to realize the Patsudo, the way of awakening. It's been my kind of big interest. Recently, we decided that we would help folks to start Dharma centers around the country and actually around the world in impoverished areas where the theme of the Dharma Center the main practice of the Dharma Center would be serving the community that it's in and that we would train folks how to start such places how to work in such places and those would be folks that want that as their career path that's what they want to do so this is

[14:42]

how they would make their monies and whatever. But it would be a Dharma center that there would be a place to sit, but it's not a place where you come to learn to sit necessarily. The people that are running it would be sitting, and that would be open to others. Oh, I don't know if it's on, but it's on me. We would train folks and look for people who could open up such places and others who want to work in such places. And then we would assist them in how to get them established. We would train them in it. And then... assisted further trainings and connections between the groups. So it's I think a new form of dharma practice that we're trying to establish which in the world is not so new but when I went on my first street retreat which is about 20 years ago what I found in that retreat

[16:06]

in being in the streets for seven days was that all the support systems, all the folks giving support to those of us living in the streets were Christians. There was not one Buddhist group helping them. And it bothered them. And I've lived with that pain for 20 years. I mean, I've done things myself, but I've lived with the pain of knowing that I still go on the streets. And if I go to a city and go into the streets, I will not find a Buddhist group helping me. It's rare. I mean, at least a place. I've been in many cities. It's not in all cities. I've never done a street retreat here in San Francisco. But I've done it all around the world. And it's very rare. I've never run into it. So... We're calling them Zen houses. The Zen houses won't be just necessarily working with homeless.

[17:10]

It would be whatever folks want to work with. Our first Zen house that's opening will be in Pennsylvania in the Appalachia. The man who's opening it is five generations Appalachia. He's been practicing Zen for 25 years. He's the first one in his family to go to college. He just graduated from Harvard Divinity School in the Buddhist tract and is now in our program to learn, sort of, it's somewhat the greatest model, what we're getting now, it's a very holistic model of how to do this kind of work. So he'll be working with Rednecks from the Appalachian and he'll be He already has an organic, there's an organic farm called the Husa. They'll be starting an eco-tourism. And there's a beautiful Zendo. Opening a place in Boston area, in the poor area. There'll be different types.

[18:11]

What we're doing is helping the people to open it. They'll be the ones doing it. I'm spreading that theme. And part of my being here is to spread the fact that we're doing it. This is new and we will start advertising it soon and letting people know. And I want to spread the word because my feeling is that there's lots of Buddhists, not just Zen, that would like to do such work. And we're looking for who I want to help them. Okay, that's just throwing out some pieces. Now, what I'd like to do I wrote a book called Instructions to the Cook. One of the themes in that book is that it's important to take the ingredients that you have and create the best meal possible. When I first started in Zen, I felt that I could not do anything until I was fully enlightened because you would create problems.

[19:21]

And by the time I wrote that book, I said, that's bullshit. that you should look at what you have, where you are, and do what you can. So there's look at the ingredients, make the best meal possible, and if it causes, if it's a horrible meal, people will spit it out, take the new ingredients that you have, make the best meal possible, offer it. If it's not good, it will be spit out. If it's good for somebody, they'll eat it. Somebody else won't. But keep doing and doing. So when I give talks, what I'd like to do is, What are the ingredients of a talk? It's all of us. Until now, it's just been me talking. That's a lousy meal. You're just one out of many. So what I need is your questions, your comments, what you'd like me to talk about, or what you would like to say, or your answers. Because many people don't have any questions. They just have answers. I don't have many answers.

[20:26]

I love questions. Questions have energy. Great. But answers, it's chilling. Oh, that's the answer? Okay. But if you have answers, please, share them with us, whatever they are. Yeah, you had a... Now, normally I don't like to answer questions until I have a whole bunch. Okay, I'm going to stick to my little... I was almost... I was almost drawn in because it's such a beautiful question. But some... Yeah. Mr. Yugo, yes, Moshe Cohen. You who, we do workshops.

[21:33]

I learned my, I practiced, I can't talk. We've seen as a culture and gravitating, we go into a kind of a collective catharsis. And I just wanted you to evaluate the fact that we are experiencing this at the same time, what opportunities do you think? Not so much to pervert. I'm writing down collective catharsis, and I have no idea. I mean, I have no idea. What happens if they are able to go outside and do what you thought?

[22:43]

That was such a good question. It's so tempting to go outside. How much does this work help people? What makes them helpful or not helpful? How not to drown in suffering. How not to drown in suffering. How not to drown in what?

[23:51]

Suffering. Okay. Yeah. How do you reconcile the acceptance of life? Sitting on the cushion. How do I reconcile acceptance and fixing? Reconcile. Acceptance. And now, there's some synonyms for fixing. Doing. Would you use doing? Or would you use healing?

[24:52]

Fixing? I'll use whatever word you're... Fixing? Improving? Fixing. You want... You're not old enough. Okay, we all have different definitions of a lot. No, I'm just kidding. Don't worry. I was disenchanted with Christianity because it was homophobic and I'm queer and it was just old stuffy and it seemed conservative and outdated, really fundamentalist and awful.

[25:53]

And then after practicing a long time at the Cambridge Center and also being an anarchist and all sorts of social activism in Cambridge, I became disenchanted with Buddhism seemed selfish, and you know, no matter how much we talked about non-self and emptiness, we all, within myself, seemed pretty hung up in our egos, which, you know. So, and now recently, I wanted to engage Buddhism, and I applied Harvard Divinity School to become Christian. And I kind of, because I Well, Christianity is a pre-existing institution that's helping people and doing social action. So why not infiltrate Christianity as a Buddhist and do social work and meditation and all of those things? So I guess I'm asking you about going off the deep end.

[26:58]

So the question is, are you going off the deep end? You've learned much from the Catholic work movement. Yeah. Sacred clowns. Yeah. Can you talk more about what you were saying about the .

[28:06]

And that's something that . Okay, I'm not fully clear. You want me to talk about imperfections? Completion? Yeah, of course that's the enlightened way, but Yeah. What is... Are you asking what is enlightenment? I don't know. Well, yeah, you were asking about my delusions when I was younger.

[29:11]

Yeah. Do you mean to... What has stood out? Yeah. What has stood out? I don't know why everybody's laughing. These are very important questions and they're all answerable. Yes. Yeah, of course they're beautiful. They're both beautiful women, women working with them.

[30:14]

Hey, Two Fools is a great group. General guidance. General guidance for specific paths. Yeah. Cutting through delusion? Cutting through delusion as I got older. cutting through delusion, cutting through delusion through the ages.

[31:25]

We got a book here. Yes, sir. That's ours? Yep. What does your clown know still? Smell of clown noses. Yeah.

[32:37]

Excuse me? Why? Why? You stay on the streets. Yes. I'll put a note in parenthesis, $100 bills. Okay. Good. How much time do I have? We're going backwards in time, or you mean tomorrow morning? Yeah. So now that I wrote all these down, I have to see whether I have my glasses.

[33:43]

Without glasses, I can't read anything. Oh, I found them. Thank you. Thank you. Um, yeah. First, I'm going to talk about the practical stuff and then get into the impractical stuff, which is the spiritual stuff. Well, we can think of the spiritual stuff. Of course, I think everything we do is the spiritual stuff.

[34:55]

It's been one of my hang-ups. When we first In the early days, well, in practice, we would, you tend to use the word practice to mean sitting in Zazen or some very specific things. And I will, after I had that experience, I was saying, what is practice in all series of life? What makes things not practice and what makes things practice? You know? How do you, what is it If all of life is practice, what do we mean by that word then? And so when I say I'm going to start with the practical things and then talk spiritual, in a way I meant philosophical. The practical things are sort of the stuff you touch, you know?

[35:59]

And our... our life, wherever it is, I mean, if it's a life in a zendo, the sitting, how you put your robes on, what you're sitting, what you're doing, what kind of mental activity, breathing out, all that's practical stuff, right? If you're in the kitchen, all that's practical stuff. If you're in the streets, all that's practical stuff. Wherever you are, it's practical stuff. What's the practical stuff? It's the moment. moment in your life. What's the non-practical stuff? It's the ideas you have, which we then can sometimes label as holy ideas, like not so good ideas, or whatever. But if your world is ideas, then that's the practical stuff. Those ideas are the practical stuff. At any rate,

[37:01]

Like I said, when I went on the streets that first time, and I've probably done a hundred street retreats, I don't know. What I did is I went on purpose. One of the reasons I went on the streets is that I was going to start working with Holy Souls. And... What I remembered was that when I was younger, back in 1960, when I graduated undergraduates, when I graduated college, I was sitting in a pizza parlor with my friend. I'm from Brooklyn, I like pizza. And we were sitting in a pizza parlor, we had just graduated, and he said to me, so, what do you want to do with your life?

[38:05]

That's what 20-year-olds have to ponder. And I said, there's three things I want to do. I want to live in a Zen monastery. I want to live in a kibbutz in Israel. And I want to live in the streets. By the time I was ready to start working with the homeless, I remembered that I had lived in a Zen monastery. I had lived in a kibbutz. in Israel that I had in the streets. So I just went to live in the streets because you should not make vows without fulfilling them. So here was a vow that I had put forward in I was 60 and this was now 85. 25 years. And I hadn't fulfilled it. I had to go into the streets. And some friends joined me.

[39:05]

And some of us had been practicing Zen for a long time. And some, Ann Waldman was with us, I don't know if you know her, she had been in the Tibetan world for a long time, a beautiful poet. Some people had never done anything like that. There was a spectrum of people, but we all had, were deeply transformed. And I had done hundreds of sashims, but for that I was deeply transformed. So I made it as a part of one of the practices that I would be doing. But when we went on, I wanted to experience the different ways different people were treating us, or treating folks in the streets. And I was pretty much a liberal and felt that Dorothy Day's places would probably be the best. Somebody asked how this fits in with the Catholic work or movement.

[40:08]

So, of course, we went to the Catholic house, the houses that she started. There were two. I went to the men's group. There was a woman's house also, but they didn't let me in that one. We went there. I also went to something called the Bowery Mission, which was started by the Baptist group. And we went to all kinds of places. And we slept in all kinds of venues. The streets and the corporate boxes and port authority and trains and all over this. And wanted to have the different experiences. The Catholic worker gave great meals, didn't require you to do anything. It was a very liberal feeling. I mingled, not so much with staff. We mingled with the folks that we eat with. But it was very liberal. And they weren't imposing anything on us.

[41:09]

The Bowery Mission imposed a lot. I mean, you would not get any food unless you sang the hymns, you know. And if you were really lucky and awoke to Christ, you could get into this discipleship program. You could do a lot more. When I brought people to the Baptist Mission, I had the feeling that we would all hate it because they were imposing so much on us. After experiencing the various things, I felt that there was a lot of power in every single way. They were all different. All different. But I also felt that the Catholic worker model would not have an effect on people that had heavy addictions. There wasn't enough power in it.

[42:12]

The Bowery Mission way had tremendous power and transformed heavily addicted folks. Now, when I started to do work with the homeless and started to do the work in Grayson, I went and studied a lot of the AA methods and the various houses, you know, halfway houses and different ways of treatment. And You know, a lot of studies. And what I came to the conclusion is that we are all addicted. And for many years, I would start my talks by saying, hi, my name is Bernie, and I am addicted to myself. And I found a path to try to lessen that addiction. But I know that it is a step-by-step process and will never end. It's a continuous path. There's even this old Japanese guy who wrote something called Yoji, continuous practice.

[43:18]

But that we're all addicted. And that the practice of working with folks to lessen those addictions is worldwide. I don't care where you go. I do care where this mic goes. So at the time when I thought of doing our Christian work, what I felt was that the major work, I don't care who we're working with, whether we're working with fantastic dedicated Zen students or crack addicts or straights or gays or... I don't care what the population is, that the primary thing has to be to lessen our addictions to the selves. To awaken. And for me, awakening is to realize the oneness of life, the interconnectedness of life.

[44:24]

So that's the primary goal. And it doesn't matter on the venue. And my feeling was that I wanted to bring that work to as many venues as possible. There are aspects of ourself that we don't want to deal with. And there are aspects of our society that we don't want to deal with. And I wanted to say, okay, let's work in all of society. And depending on who you are, you will choose which aspect of society you want to work with. So our Zen houses will be all very different, working with different, due to the person who starts them, they're choosing who they want to work with, what community. Every community is different. And in order to know what to do, they have to do community assessment.

[45:29]

So we're teaching tools of... individual assessment, of family assessment, of community assessment, of community organizing, of counseling. We're teaching the various tools. So when somebody says we want to open a Zen house in such a place, they'll know how to do an assessment of that area, come up with what's their plan of what services they're going to be offering, what's their business plan of how they're going to support all of that. It's a holistic picture. The Grace and I was built on a mandala concept, a holistic picture in which we use Buddhist foundations by Buddha families to sort of cover the various areas. We look at individuals holistically and the community holistically and the families holistically. And we teach people how to do that.

[46:30]

If you're thinking of going to Harvard Divinity School, go into, there's a Buddhist tract now. And I'm actually teaching in that Buddhist tract. And there's a relationship between the Divinity School and Zen Peacemakers to ordain lay ministers to do the work that I'm talking about. And if you come to the program with us, you'll be a credit for the Harvard Divinity School. And if you go there first, there's a connection. This man who... starting the Appalachian House, finished there and was part of developing that track. People come with suffering everywhere. It's not so unique, suffering. In fact, there was a guy named Chucky Muni Buddha who talked a lot about it. And it pretty much said it's universal.

[47:33]

In fact, I would say that if we took a vote here of who does not suffer, we won't get many hands raising. And the ones who raise their hands are liars. So suffering is universal. And sometimes I think it's a cop-out to say we can't serve others because we're suffering. And in fact, for me, what I felt, that is the folks we work with that are homeless, they serve others. In our program, everybody is serving others. Because there are no others. We all learn to serve. And to say that we suffer and so we can't do, we got to take care of ourselves first before we are healthy enough to take care of others, I don't buy that. While we're suffering, we can take care of the suffering because we're all suffering.

[48:35]

And there is no end to suffering. Although, of course, we talk about an end to suffering. You all chant the heart suture. Not everybody chants the heart suture here, but probably a lot of you do. And you know what it says in there? and no end to suffering. What does that mean? Why shouldn't you stay on the streets if you get $900 bills? I met a man that then came to live with me for a while. He was in charge of a village under the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Highway in New York.

[49:36]

There's an FDR drive, it's called, on the east side. And there was a village in lower Manhattan, down by the fish markets. There was a place where there was a village, and he was sort of in charge of that village. He'd been in the streets about 25 years when I met him. He goes by the name of the Batman. That's one of his names. He made a lot of money living on the streets. More than $100 bills. He's still living on the streets. For about a year he lived with me at the Zen Community of New York. And he wants to come live with us now. I think it will be a little difficult. He's a brilliant man, a wonderful man.

[50:36]

He's also a crack at it. He took me down into the tunnels under Manhattan. At one point there were 5,000 people living in the tunnels under Manhattan, in different levels. He took me down to meet the king of Bamo people, a man named Bernard Isaac. So he knew a lot about life. He's a beautiful guy. But why do we live where we live? Those of you who live here, why do you live here? Those who don't live here, what do you live where you live? What's it got to do with $100 bills? Is that why we live where we live? Because we have enough money or we don't have enough money? Why do we do what we do?

[51:39]

Because what's driving us? It's interesting questions. I don't know the answers, but it's interesting questions. But I do know it's got nothing to do with hundred dollar bills. You know, you could have a lot of money in the streets, and if you do have too much money, you can get killed. Because you don't have banks. What do you do with that money? If somebody knows you have a lot of money, you can get killed for that money. Therefore, Some of the most generous people I've met are homeless folks. They'll give money away. That's not what they want. You know what they want? What do they want? They want love. They want dignity. That's what every one of us wants. It's not... We want love.

[52:39]

We want dignity. In the Jewish tradition, it's called we want to be treated like mench. like people. That's what everybody wants. An actress that many of you may know, Ellen Burstein, went on the streets with me when she was 70 and was going to have two knees replaced in a few months. So we built a staff to walk. We do a lot of walking on the streets. But we also raise money to go sometimes on trains because some things are very far apart. We've never been in the subway system. And walking through the night sometimes, you know, it's hard. We have to walk in the nighttime. And she went on the streets about six, seven years ago, I think now.

[53:45]

I don't know. And when she talks about herself, she always talks about one story that happened, one incident that happened on the streets. Everybody who goes on the streets with me has to beg. You have to beg. You don't have any money. You can't come with money. And part of the way I do it, there's different ways of doing things, but if you come with me, I ask you to beg. And so she, we were outside of Tompkins Park, which was a park, went down in lower Manhattan. There was a time when there was a whole village of homeless folks living in that park. And then one day, the police decided enough's enough, and they came in and beat the shit out of the people, bloody them all up, billy clubs. kicked them all out and then tore down the park and built a new park that's now a very pretty gentrified park.

[54:54]

So right up to the park is a little cafe and there were two women sitting outside the cafe drinking coffee or having their meal so Ellen went up and asked if she could have a dollar because she needed to get on the train to go somewhere. And one of the women gave her a dollar. And she started to walk away. Not a hundred dollars, but a dollar. Gave her a dollar. And she started to cross the street and she was really happy, proud that she got this dollar. And then she noticed that she was crying. Why am I crying? And then she realized that she was crying because the woman who gave her the dollar did it like this. Looked away from her. Would not look at her. It's the first time that ever happened to her. And to this date, she cannot forget it. And there's nobody that has ever gone on the streets with me that will ever look away from a person.

[56:05]

One of the things you learn living on the streets is dignity and love. And I think one of the things in our practice is to learn to not look away from those aspects of ourselves that we're afraid of or don't want to deal with and to not look away from those aspects of society that we're afraid of or don't want to deal with. And for liberals, sometimes that means to conservatives. I mean, each of us has things that we will look away from because they're no good and we don't want to deal with them. You don't invite them to your parties. those kind of people. And for everybody, there's those kind of people. So, for me, this is one life. I mean, I think that's a correct process. I think that's what when Shakyamuni Buddha was saying, how wonderful, how wonderful it

[57:15]

This is all one. That's a collective catharsis. It's the whole world. Dogen talks about cosmic resonance. If this is all one, how do you have a non-collective catharsis? And Then we come to Vicki's thing of Zen forms. So I'm sure you're calling Zen forms San Francisco Zen forms. Yeah, I mean, we just had an interesting conversation with Rep, who's, I'm sure he's talking about ritual and the form as the Buddha forms and rituals, right?

[58:28]

So, in that sense, what's not a Zen form? But that's not what you're talking about, probably. You probably told him that very specific, or the particular mudra, or the... See, I'm not sure what you're talking about, in a way. Because it depends what we mean by Zen. My Zimi Roshi, my teacher, defined Zen. He constantly said over and over, Zen is nothing but life. He used Zen and life as synonyms. So there was no way for us to look at anything... You know, if we looked at anything as non-Zen, he would give us a drink. That was his undoing. So what's important, I think, is to realize that everything we do is the ritual of life.

[59:32]

It's a beautiful form. When we put our two hands together, you know, it's the five of this and five of that, and you're putting it together and you're making one, and all life is one. But when we walk, those are the Zen forms to me. If we could love life that way, And then it's all Zen forms. And if we get trapped into certain things have some kind of more significance than other things. Now, I know we could argue this point, but eventually you've got to come to the place that all of the movements have to be nothing but... Zen forms.

[60:34]

Dogen hated, I shouldn't say hated, he didn't use the word Zen, he didn't want Zen sex. He preached Batsudo, the way of awakening. If you can see everything as the way of awakening, that's it, Batsudo. And then you don't have a particular subsets. And yet, knowing all of that, this whole body is a beautiful form and whatever, and yet the fingers have certain functions and certain forms that are different than the hands, that are different than the nose, and different than the anus. They all have different forms. And there are values in studying all those various forms. The only problem is when we consider the anus lower than the brain or something or other. And we make those choices. That's... As far as I'm concerned, that becomes our problems. I'm going to stop soon.

[61:39]

How not to drown in suffering? I'm going to end with you. Well, I'm going to... You know this story? Who said having not to drown myself for it? Yeah. Uh-huh. So... I'm going to give two different answers. One that's very... very close... Who you are? Your name is? So... I'm Bernie.

[62:45]

And... You know, I'm... I'm 70 now. And probably about 10 years ago, I started to have what's called men's problems. My prostate, they thought it was cancer. It turned out not to be cancerous, just enlarged. But all men will wind up having prostate problems if they live long enough. I think I heard somewhere that the probability of having prostate problems for men is equal to their age. So if you lived long enough, you were for sure going to have it. So I had prostate problems, and I got to do certain things for that. I have diabetes, too. I got that. So you got to do certain things for that. And then I look closely inside, and there's cancer cells growing.

[63:49]

That's true for everybody. There's cancer cells growing. And then there's these white cells that are attacking these cancer cells so they don't get out of balance. Sometimes they get out of balance and then you have that kind of problem. I haven't had that problem yet. But the problem I have is that these damn white cells, I'm a pacifist, and these white cells are attacking my cancer cells. Now, how can a pacifist have deadly battles going on inside? It's crazy. So... If I look at all of that suffering that's going on in this body, what do you do, man? What do you do? Do you drown with it? What keeps me from not drowning with all the suffering that's happening in my body? You can't believe this. You know I have no knees? I mean, I'm sitting here in terrible pain because I have no cartridge.

[64:56]

I have severe rheumatoid arthritis. So it's just bones they're supposed to replace me if they haven't done that yet. But there's nothing there. All kinds of stuff. All kinds of stuff. So there was this person, or I don't know if you want to call it a person, called a bodhisattva. What are bodhisattvas? Are they persons? They're something. But there was this bodhisattva, you know, these silly bodhisattvas, they make this vow that they're going to not be fully enlightened until all things are fully enlightened, or something like that, you know. And it was... This particular Bodhisattva, our Vilokiteshva, got all caught up with the suffering.

[66:00]

The world was so much suffering, and they were going to have to not come out of that until all things were enlightened. So what happened? It broke apart into me and Tisa. There was so much. He didn't drown. She didn't drown in that suffering. She broke apart into all these pieces, and it all came back together. That's thousands of arms and thousands of heads. And in each hand was a different thing. In one hand was a pitchfork, in another hand a box of condoms, in another hand needles, in another hand was a magnifying glass to read the sutra books. All these different things. And so instead of drowning in the suffering, you could accept the fact that you are all such and beings. And then you just do things. These are all the ingredients and we do it. It doesn't go the way you want, that's because nothing goes the way we want.

[67:14]

Okay, that's enough for me. So, I thank you for having me. We do have flyers out there that talk about our program for, and we're actually working in that program of training to work in such things as these Zen houses, and we are, as I said, we are opening. Oh, let me just say that there is a beautiful worker house in Boston, in Broxbury, poor area of Boston. That was started by Dorothy Day. And that 40 years ago, a woman, Kathy McKenna, moved there and joined and took over that running of that Catholic house and built it up and used the model of Grayson. And they have a bakery and they have a restaurant and they teach homeless to get careers.

[68:20]

And it's a beautiful. They built 100 units of houses. They've done a lot of things. Beautiful space. She is a Buddhist. And at one point, all her staff were Buddhists. So these were Buddhists who wanted to do that work and could only find the venue in a Catholic house. So our first Zen house in that area is going to be in connection with her. The thing that she's missing in her beautiful works is the spiritual practice. Now the rest is spiritual, but she wants a Buddhist Vela. So we're going to work together, and that's going to be starting in March. And already the students at Harvard that are part of my class there are doing the internship work at this Haley house. So it's already happening. But that was beautiful work. And it's not that we're doing anything...

[69:21]

They were just trying to provide more venues for people who want to do this kind of work. And not everybody should or does want to do this kind of work. So this is just for those folks who want to do this kind of work. There's all kinds of beautiful work to be done. We have brochures out there. And I'm sure you ended with the four vows. I'm not sure of anything.

[69:51]

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