Of course, it's almost the same old thing to say, that you've already written in the past, of course, and so we'll try not to keep you too long. The second business seems to begin with your taking the record into the job of a signer, and, with any luck at all, later becoming a monk and eventually, in the Mahayana way, becoming a teacher. And this seems to be the path that the Zen people have always taken. The word refuge is sort of odd in our language, so it's very hard for me to understand what that exactly means.

[01:21]

It means that I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dharma, I take refuge in the Sangha, all that. Well, among other things, of course, it means a whole bunch of things, but you're not a true refuge. It's an aristocratic field, as it is, with grades and positions. But for a monk, of course, it means giving up all the things that you have hitherto taken for granted, that you are attached to, believing in, or depending upon. We depend on other people to a great degree, we depend on our social systems, we depend on the sunrise in the morning and five hundred other things to do. We expect things to come our way. And to decide, well, what I'm going to depend on, how, is the Buddha.

[02:25]

And again, well, who is the Buddha, how is the Buddha? And that's a question we have to be asked. We're supposed to look at other people and see the Buddha. You see Joe Schmo, you see Joe Buddha, you see Mary Buddha, somebody else's Buddha. And you also look at yourself and see Buddha. It's a great difficulty, because we usually see ourselves as not very interesting or not very nice, or we have a lot of things wrong with us. Or, on the other hand, we sometimes think we're quite wonderful. And that gets in the way too. And not to lose sight of the Buddha. And so when we say, I take refuge in you, partly I'm saying, I take refuge in myself. In my real self, my actual self.

[03:31]

Not the personality or the history that we have built for ourselves very carefully, in which we enjoy looking at a lot of the time. And we enjoy cursing and so on. But the Buddha nature in which we make this very, very all-encompassing, all-inclusive. And that's a tough word. You look in the mirror and say, there's Buddha. Nevertheless, there you are. And to a degree, you're taking refuge in your own understanding. And then of course the book says, understanding your teaching, your bhagavad-gita from outside is no good to you. You have to have your own, you have to make your own. And ultimately, of course, you're stuck with your own, and you have to live with your own personal heresy.

[04:34]

And as far as I can see, the idea of taking refuge, that is, giving up all kinds of other refuge, and deciding to refuse to do that, is very hard. And it's maybe not so hard to take refuge in Dharma, but to say you're teaching Buddha, which is fairly straightforward and uncomplicated. And it's not difficult to have some sort of trust in some sort of faith movement. And of course the main teaching is to desire. And that is more or less difficult, especially at the first. But after a while, in five or six years, you'll learn how to do it. And of course, Dogen says, in doing so, then it's practicing the Buddha-self. It's practicing all the Buddhas, and being Buddha.

[05:41]

It's the practices, enlightenment, and so on. So you don't have to worry as long as you're sitting. You're out of mischief. So that part of taking refuge in Dharma, or teaching, is perhaps a little easier. The third point is much more difficult. Taking refuge in the Sangha fixes all the problems. You know, you have to... There's always somebody you have to deal with. You have to deal with the watermelon man, deal with the gas man, deal with the dental assistant, whatever. And sometimes these people rub you the wrong way. You take one look at it, and you say, oh my God, how can I deal with that?

[06:46]

I don't like the way it looks. That's what it's trying to tell me, or whatever. And so this thing about seeing other people who aren't the Sangha, is very hard. Unless we see that the other people is us, we're going to have a lot of trouble. That's a very difficult practice. You look at other people, and now you see that it's good to have seen that it is you, who you're looking at. And how do you treat you? How do you treat yourself? How do you treat other people? Now then, of course, technically, the Sangha is the order of monks. All the people who are ordained, and have their heads shaved, and have their clothes concealed, that's the old idea of Sangha.

[07:49]

But actually, Sangha is all the folks you've been dealing with, all the folks you've lived with, all the folks you've practiced with, all the folks you've known. It's a large Sangha, a big world. Then we end up saying, I'm completely taking refuge in Buddha. I'm completely taking refuge in the Dharma. I'm completely taking refuge in the Sangha. In other words, you decide to be enlightened. You decide to follow the first, or the third, of the pure precepts, about how you adopt living enlightenment as much as possible. In other words, all of this is very difficult, if you look at it as a difficulty. If you look at it as just ordinary life, and breathing, and walking around, nothing hard about it. The problem is, how are you looking at it? How do you understand it?

[08:50]

Are you understanding what's real, or are you understanding and understanding? I think you may have an idea. So, at that point, one usually has to come in with his sword, and cut all sorts of dirty knots, and think about what's real and what's not. And again, this kind of activity is something to learn about, and about what is real, what's going on. And of course, you find out that everything is real, because you're real. And you is everything, and everything is you, and it's life. And so it goes swirling around in a great chaos, which at first is difficult to accept. We don't like chaos, we like order. We like to make design, we like to make order in our lives. A long time ago, I was with some other people, had a meeting with John Cage, the composer, and somebody asked him, how come the writings of Bach are so popular these days?

[09:54]

This would have been about 1950. How come Bach is so popular? Bach and Baroque came together. And Cage said, well, it's because they're perfect. The writings are perfect. Everything goes together in its own operas, very smoothly. They're perfect. We Americans like machines that work, like machines that do what they're supposed to do. And that's what the music of Bach has. Therefore, we like it. The one thing maybe about the Buddhist tradition is imperfection. The difficulty of getting it to work. You have to put out a lot of effort to push it around, to twist the wheel of the Dharma, like they say. I want you to do a wedding ceremony for me and my girlfriend. I want you to do a memorial service for Grandma. Have a funeral for George.

[10:56]

And it's very nice of you. Thank you very much. Of course, it doesn't seem like a very good idea. I had one marriage done on blues already. I've only done three. The funeral, of course, is pretty well set. I don't think there's any merit to it. But anyway, I haven't done any ordination yet. I'm going to try to do it sometime. But I think it's the pattern of the doings. It's always the pattern of becoming a monk. Becoming a teacher. It's a consummation of development into fruition. A lot of fun. Don't look away. So, if you're taking refuge in these three things,

[12:03]

it's sort of basic Buddhism. And, of course, that's what they call it in Tibetan Buddhism. Take refuge with the teacher. In the three treasures. And get started, seriously started, with your Buddhist practice. And, of course, in Japan, they have a term, jukai, for taking what we used to call lay ordination or lay initiation. And I've definitely heard some teachers say, I want to be your student. And I want to officially be your Buddhist. And sign up to be a jukai, whether you like it or not. And you either buy your name in the box or in the ceremony. Receive the precepts, just like the monks do. You get a name, and you get to be a jukai. And you don't get your head shaved, but you do have these precepts to gauge yourself by.

[13:07]

Watch. How it is you're doing things. How are you getting along relative to these lists of good? Do's and don'ts. And I always think of the 16 ways of doing things as not just ways of prohibition, following the 10 you don't know, the 10 preliminary precepts that are taught in Buddhism. Actually, there are ways whereby you can do things in a different way. You can look at things in a different way. And then you get accustomed to it. And they are guided. And you can follow them. Although, again, it's not easy. It's very, very easy to fall off the leash of the trolley. And the thing about it is, though,

[14:10]

that it's easy to get back on. Well, that's what the short repentance period is about. It's a whole religious ceremony. Once you're almost done, again, start over. You don't fall into the pit. Stay there. Get up. Get excited. Start over. There you go. And as long as you are practicing, as long as you are trying to do those, well, things are going to become rather easy for you. Anyway, you find yourself changing somewhat. Your ideas, your feelings about things change. And after you have accepted in this Buddhist way, you can accept to reset.

[15:10]

And have a different, have a new start in life. You can't try to go, I want to do things in a different way. I want to look at the world and myself in a different way. Have a new start in life. And it's at once very annoying and very enlightening. Because at some point you start getting some flash about what it is you're really doing, who it is you are. And it comes to you. And suddenly you say, I lost my temper. So then you have to figure out, well, losing your temper is a permanent condition. So you become a ghost. And you have to go with it. Start over. Watching my temper.

[16:14]

Watching my need to get drunk or whatever. And decide to try coming at it in a different way. Anyhow, the world changes. You see the world perhaps in a different way. And you suddenly find yourself rushing to your lecture, and you say, oh, I forgot my rock suit. I forgot my rock suit. I should have it. And suddenly you find yourself doing something else, and you've got it on, and you've ripped the suit up. You've taken it off. So you find your temper and your view of things change. And you find this new start.

[17:15]

It's very hard to find somebody who you figure knows what he's doing, and then tell him what you want to do. I want to be a guru. I want to be a student. It's very difficult. Probably a good idea to travel around a lot like you did in the old days, and find somebody who can talk to you. And watch him for a long time. See what he's up to. And if you think he's got a lot of questions, you can hang out. And sign up for these student conferences. Now then, this is occurring to the old, traditional, popular Buddhism. The reason that you can do this is that you were a real nice guy in his lifetime, and he did something nice in his lifetime.

[18:20]

And it's possible for you in this time to be born as a human being, and to hear about Buddhism, and to find what you want to talk about. The idea is, of course, that being born as a human being is very difficult. It's a mission to arrange to be a human being at all. And then the next thing is to be a human being, and hear and see and understand. I don't know what the chant says, but it's always that way. And ideally, in a way, being a human being is very special. And it's sort of on a high page where you can either buy into the Buddhist things, or sort of move along. People are real worried nowadays about Buddhism in America.

[19:24]

But, you know, if you've got to change Buddhism around, it's good. And of course, it's already here, it's already been turned around eight or nine times, and we're probably going to go through a lot more change. What was the question? Well, you just say it's already here, but really, there is somewhat more interest. A lot of these philosophies, it's just that the only reason, for instance, 14,000 of them exist in North America, and the United States as well. But maybe only in terms of maybe a couple hundred people get to sit in a hallway and see him lecture. Is it catching on? Certain various Zen-type organizations practice some of the Buddhadharma in a certain way. But only in terms of that.

[20:25]

It doesn't seem to be a big, giant bungus, that's the way it's depicted sometimes. There's a bit of publicity in the paper. Quotations by, for instance, the 14th Dalai Lama over the Tibetan Yashoda. It seems that maybe there's a bit more publicity that way, but I don't see it as being starkly big the way sometimes it's depicted to be. Sometimes you can see a big, giant article by Francis Kropp, I believe, by Mr. Durr, maybe it's a section of The World. The largest article I've ever seen about the Tibetan Buddhist issue and certain conflicts with the Buddhist Republic of China. And then some smaller articles about argumentation by certain Chinese public figures. One of their opinions, if you cite the Tibetan Buddhism...

[21:27]

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