man
don't forget system

the afternoon everybody
before we were speaking about the specificity of detail that so important in them
good writing
and i i mentioned paris
you know examples of that
and i thought i might dumb
make sure i understand our time constraints here
yeah i'm article read your a couple of things this is from
a piece about i'm very interested these days and cranes and tigers and doing a book on that and fifteen crane species of the world and also eventually a book on long asian pieces one will be about like by car and one will be about mustang and one will be
about tigers and i've had a chance to do quite a lot of research with tigers and cranes because both of these very beautiful the splendid life forms seem to have originated in eastern asia so i've been going over there and try to combine our trips
and i went back to the siberian tiger tiger project those of you who
you may have seen a wonderful kurosawa film called the soo good salah how many people have seen their suits a whole agonist a lot less great but as you know the original book from which it came which is a masterpiece at my view is called us to the trapper and by the k or
on a young russian geography lieutenant exploring this eastern part very far eastern part of siberia if you sit on the map and oaxaca a great cause siberia reaching down to touch north korea and syria and i said it's an extraordinary of faunal area with them
you know bears links and wolf and salmon in the north and leopards and tropical flycatchers and tigers and the southern part but all kind of intermingling in the zone between nothing quite like in the world and very beautiful it has a climate more or less like here
like colder and wetter have quite a lot i'd done anyhow that's
i'm going back and forth to the siberian tiger project that's there and just briefly the siberian tiger and the bengal are probably the only two races of tiger which will make it through the next twenty five years their eight races altogether hum and three are already gone and least two about
apps three on on the brink of extinction so they one of the animals that pr most interested in saving their called by biologists umbrella species because if you say them you also said many others and a great deal of habitat so i'm very interested and tigers and the cranes and and the
wales hopefully first because they're magnificent and second because they are j important in terms of biodiversity and
saving these ah i went to i went to siberia for the tigers the first time and it was also a crane expedition of the amur river wonderful
and that time i got there day after they trapped this a beautiful young tigris i called a lena out your nickname
she's only the second one trapped by the project i got there the next day and am
are we checked through the woods because she been trapped and of up you know tranquilizer a rifle fire dart and then the additive blood samples and weighed her and so forth just to check her health and then she was
is released but she didn't move very far shown he moved about a mile abs of this loose creek and then she was still for about three or four days and they are very worried and we didn't really know whether she was pregnant and because of the shock of a capture even though the capture is very well done now compared to the old days it's a kind of a clamp on the forward part of the pod
doesn't even break the skin but as the creature struggles at titans so she really cannot get out of it and there's a lot of emotional stress for the tiger of course bob and that is not desirable they've learned they sort of perfected a tranquilizing treat for now they lose very very few animals would occasionally i do those one
but she was seem not to be recovering from their stronger this expanse you just was not moving and she had the radio cause they could tell that when she is lying still are standing still it goes like me
me
keep maybe not even that fat
so we went up up to this beautiful woodland and as you know this will end is this so temperate so boreal
woodland and it's very much like our woodland here the same genus the same genera know oaks almonds and vase evergreens and maples everything more pretty much the way we have across this a temperate regions here but the species are different so you seem to be going to this kind of dream
wood which is almost like the would you know at home
and of this like a childhood tail would you know and it's full of wonderful flowers and ferns new hit thrushes going to the not are thrushes as that sort of situation
and we snuck up to earn about one hundred yards of this ah
tyrus
i'm just honestly read your cover of passage she and i just i want you not reading as to him
related to flog my work probably i am way down deep but
i am but i want to deceive you notice what are the one of the details that the kind of details we were talking about earlier in the ones who really make it come up if they do and they may not but you can be the judge that
the researchers told me that lena's signals were still coming from a wooded drainage area known as the cooner lyca in the southern part of the reserve very close to the sight of her capture two days earlier hum
immobilization drug stuff the next day and the hope of monitoring the tigers signals more precisely we checked into the forest following a creek upstream for several miles through hardwood tiger of oak and birch cottonwood in maple poplar ash and up with scattered bias on a demo trail all but closed by friends were big rock pugmire
works or footprints perhaps season and made by lena perhaps not farther on with deep scratched trees were a tiger had sharpened its claws eventually we arrived at the site where lena had been snared a large cottonwood where the ground was torn up all around and a strong saplings the kamat sikhism
man's arm that had been snapped off clean lena's captors spoke with quiet all the terrible roars and lunging the ferocity with which this young female had made three swift charges on the cable of her snare before she could be tranquilized since then she had moved less than a mile upstream using some rough to
angulation to fix your precise location we paused at a point estimated by dr horn aka to be approximately one hundred yards from the tiger over the receiver came more rapid beatings be pp pp pp harness the corresponding to my heart at that moment
because you know this tigers up and you know she sees you and she not that far away and she not well you see over the receiver him rob adams indicating that lena was up and moving and had us located to she did not roar but nobody believed that she was in good temper i envisioned her with her head rail
raised alert or small round white spotted ears twitching and the greenish sunlight in the fragmented son shares of the woodland the head would be camouflaged by bold black calligraphic lines inscribed on frost bright browse and beard and rough and a beautiful and terrifying mask of snow
i
well a few days later we had to go even closer because she still hadn't both and when i left the in fact she hadn't moved in they were really seriously worried and we did we really tried to get her up from going with that's how closely we push it on second day and actually a day or two after i left she did get up and she was fine she went back onto
our hunting circuit and this is june and october she had a litter and she had four kids they can tell out by the footprints really new tractor and so this is very very exciting for this project because of this is the first continuity of generations that they had had and as have a steady purpose
esa's it was critical to the biologist well in november they heard the deep slow down again and it a static again and one of them drove out to this part of this lumber road she's the only road out as a lumber road and fact the only vehicles are lumber vehicles and
through thrown off the soldiers and she had clearly been poached
and while they were talking about it and consulting how to do they are somebody over someone else's shoulders saw this cub or by this time the cubs or bobcat sizes up like this and he was struggling up the hill through this drift and they knew those cubs which and huckabee's there i'm not
the word i want only tiger cubs yet comes
bear cubs of the next day they came and they made a kind of a surround and i caught all for of and they all got clogged up a pantry these little guys are tough as they can be or to died very shortly the go out of genetic am
canada faults and this probably because of inbreeding when you get a low population like this they were as they are prone to that sort of thing that it was not a me because of the poaching episode and then i'm were hurt in any way and the other two are here now if you ever and yet either in indianapolis in them money
apple is sue or they come i want to see the indianapolis she's also called in and she's she's very beautiful so if you go to indianapolis it's a nice through anyway if you like zoos
they asked me to come back and see well in the wintertime i didn't get back for about four years and by that time another young tigris had moved into lena's range and lena's range that crossing this logging road and there's not a truck out there that hasn't got a rifle ready to go these tigers are worth about fifteen thousand bucks apiece
the to the chinese medicine trade and you know even hardly blame people in today's russia for shooting m and m
they're also they really looking for elk we had elk every supper time while i we're out there and that's the prey base for the tiger so when we are other the tigers getting squeezed out here
so i saw the oh here we are
thirteen tyres have been collared release since nineteen ninety two as when i first went and were monitor being monitored by weekly from the air and one morning as the biplane used in projects surveys crisscross an open valley and made a slow grinding turn over a logging road i saw the first wild tiger in my life bounding swiftly a
across open ground to two feet of powder snow and whisking out of sight beneath a great loan spruce alerted the pilot circle the spruce tighter and tighter i should tell you this airplane was like a huge cry was built in poland about nineteen oh eight
it was it was really an old crate is absent know of nothing in there to hang on to no seats that definitely old to with a big motor up front and two wings and a pilot who is perfectly suited to this crap korea
snag all tools and wild and unshaven as had even as hat was cocked or on one side and annually we had to go through about three thousand feet to order to receive the tiger the signal from the car as soon as he had that seemingly he was like a pointers on the owl and i we are grind
around these hills you couldn't believe it in our just was terrifying
and we did every didn't see the tigers and for us even in the winter sometimes they very hard to say
hum so we saw this one now
and there it was but i i almost only saw it kind of in silhouette and it was bounding across the our son just as her tiger emblem emblematic tiger is very low winter sun over the japanese sea of japan you know is repaired are beautiful and am
but then it got into this pine grove ah and i glimpsed a flash of bold color and the shining greens than the sunlit burnt orange and golden brown of a splendid creature moving purposely but without haste over the snow sheltered by the trees it did not bound or hide but advanced and
hurriedly down a sparkling white corridor between the pines allows was i'll read this last little thing
i had another experience who was really even though that was my first tiger and i've been to india a few times i've never seen a tiger the tigers installers and don't see them ah
but something happened and like and you can tell and i tried to capture on this experience what it was that the so awesome about this even though it seems not to have been so significant
this new tigris cartier's rather eerie she moved into the same territory and she to apparently had a a cub and she too was crossing the road and terribly scared that she was gonna get shot and she seemed to be going over under the corner of the same guna like a ballet there are a lot of elk and there and that's issues hunting and then she we could be found her true
acts we found her tracks crossing the road not fifty yards from where they are lena had been shot and this is on a long empty road so empty so vast you know the common theme music coincidence that these two tigers to use a par would have the identical range was kind of spooky am
the following day in the afternoon we stopped again on the ice bound empty road worthiness color had been found not to commemorate lena but because catchy and so forth hum
the writ she caught she came down from region cross the road to make her way to the out bottoms her radio signal a pulsing beat like the hard shipping of a bird or like the rubbing of to stones together was loud and fast but that might mean only that are collar was rubbing on a frozen kill
to verify the existence of the litter we wanted to check the tiger tracks around the kill we couldn't do that while she was present we didn't want to crowd her and she wouldn't want heard a crowd us and it might not have been good for the cob and so far so we sensibly abstained going down but then
when the radio collar what we came back on afternoon she was up on the ridge on the other side of the road so we decided to make a descent quickly to the killer and see what we could find and i have evidence down there we knew there was a killer because we can see ravens going to it
the snow in the woods was to the this is the one are just listen and i'm just gonna astrue at a response after this is over the fish to pacific pick out the details and bring this alive for i'm just curious to know what works zealand done it if it brings it alive you
if it doesn't bring a life for you please say that as well
the snow in the woods and was two feet deep and frothy with try cold in the deep frost a pea green moth cocoon suspended from a twig was the solitary note of green in the bottoms we follow the smooth white surface of the kunal lyca which in this place might have been forty feet across on the river
our eyes to snow left by the wind was light and catches pug marks were sharp as if in sized and steel in one place the tigris had lain down and stretched leaving a ghostly outline even to the great head and long tail the leg crook and the big floppy pause so clear that
one could almost see the stripes her ambush site was a river island and small bent black saplings against know uncanny camouflage for the white accents of her mask and her vertical black markings not far away the heart-shaped prince the young elk broke the ice glaze on the oxbow off the river
and from the snow evidence we were able to reconstruct precisely what had happened before prince came together with the elk stopped short
in a place of elms and cottonwood some seventy yards from the crouching tiger perhaps the our glistened sniffed and trembled for a moment big dark eyes round from this taught point it's suddenly sprang sideways attending the far bank in one scared bound as the tigris launched herself from
hiding and cut across her quarries route and ten foot leaps eating silent round explosions in the snow shooting through the dark riverine trees like a tongue of fire she overtook the big deer and hauled down and a would have birch and poplar about thirty seven yards we walked it off from where she'd started
striking from behind she'd grasped throat to suffocate her pray for there was little blood only the arcs of a bony l clegg sweeping weekly on the surface of the snow and last sad spasm of the creatures urine
with logging trucks howling pass perhaps sixty yards up the steep slope this was what was much too close to the road the tigris drag the ox and ninety yards farther back across the oxbow and the swamp island to the western bank where she had lain and hiding i shouldn't interrupt up here to say the day before this we'd gone up to a village of
the mountains that dumb are saying you have talked about in this ah be shark and desk love it
and we were talking to him about an extension of this biosphere reserve it's there but they had just lost somebody to a tiger sergei any softened we are showing exactly how that tigris took him in and kind of why
ah what it happened up the and so they were still go but in shock but they still said they wanted their tigers than and the taiga would not be the same without without them and damn this is a countryside where there are so few people we drove all the way for this little fishing port of tierney on the coast up into the mountains drove i don't know
saw another vehicle except for the logging trucks that are ripping off all agree and pine for japanese companies and am
no houses and very few people in this landscape so why even one person is measurable fraction of them human population so sergei in the offers a serious what he was a sable trapper and by see gorky park she did you remember those beautiful sables glencross is now in the most valuable for in the world are kind of a big weasel
okay and seeing as this is this tigris drag this l gives a young out but even a young as massive as you know and the when the tigris a drag the up some nine yards further back and seeing the smooth drag mark with its spots of blood one unwillingly imagine the similar track
he left by the body of poor sergei denisov must have been close to the size and weight of this young carcass with the same astonishment in his wide eyes
the elk all that remained with the legs the head and the stiff course hide which are usually abandoned by the tiger there was no meat left on the twisted carcass the eyes were frozen to blue ice too hard even for ravens
ah
what detail detail who like to say honey
you forgot the whole thing already
like that image oh yeah oh please them unexploded aspersions is now a where they're perfectly round like potholes in the snow in the now
why
on the ice i think that was one of the most beautiful things i've ever seen and yet you couldn't photograph it was so light and so slight and so gossamer he was kind of up
zen teaching all by itself with the perishability said it was just so clear so precise and than the next node it would disappear he now
yeah
do they help in in its motions on the circles on the stone good god these are all great anybody else
the what
asked at this super i want to compliment you on tooth exhausted the for details i would have chosen myself those the things that those little in consequential seeming things that i'm really i think as is what you're looking for the i i was struck by that green pod that cocoon because it was the only thing the
the only hope of future the whole landscape are locked in by ice and cold you know guardian this black silhouetted saplings but as one green part of incipient life you know waiting for spring to come over yeah that's great
i just want to congratulate you on your sitting this is the hub is a very strong sitting that last time and many of you have probably not sat before so i compliment you on your on your stillness you in my own group home and sometimes more restless nap
hum
yeah maka read anymore
and will you have some
i want you to do now we're talking about and we have been in the previous period we've been talking about this immediacy of effect
and how often you can't find words for an answer we'll struggle because overwhelming the way and article us
but sometimes is start that is just you what is that we have our minds is so clouded by ideas you know we always we have all our symbols for example of death i talked quite a lot about death in my i'm a home group because our people understood that and are people who shy from that azalea
so negative the if you know you so morbid well i don't know i think death is are ever present with as cast native pointed that out death is your best friend is your best advisor makes you appreciate your life
and dumb
so i had this i gave a dharma talk and a show on on deaf and dealing with it with ms and point of view and how we you know how would you think we see in the hamlet and maybe we'll be better prepared and ocean maybe be won't we may be whining like dogs the law that made on
but to show you how incipient it is
member what ah every man said i think i quoted that is an epigraph in a book death thou chemist when i had the least mine
we all know people who are suddenly how to suddenly overtaken by nafie ever an incurable cancer other diseases suddenly comes on and they're gone very short time for an accident can happen pay equity
so he should have this kind of awareness and try to understand what it is you know in our existence and how ephemeral it is and also how glorious everything
so i want you to turn to the person next year first and whether you know the monotony don't be shy put your hands up on there
cheekbones

to just just just feel that you feel those those cheekbones okay i really have a sense of that look into each other's eyes look into each other's eyes
and just hold out for manage the fewer and meditation and now with your little fingers if you can or as how are you can do it any the other person can help you a little
ah lift the upper lip

don't don't be shy do it do it
ne the person like a wolf can curl her or his own offer them
right now hot holding that holding the cheekbones and there you are
and now you can put your hands down

i'm hearing a lot of nervous laughter
hum no but i mean that we think of the we have these symbols about death and the skull is probably the leading wine
and we don't really think that the skull is already there but there is that teeth and the bonds that scholars right there the same skull somebody's gonna find some digging sometimes the very same one of your loved one or your friend or your dharma brother whoever it may be
and that skull is with us always was a skeleton of course but it's a good
reminder of how close everything is
well if you were to describe that
i'm writing you see that's the immediacy we can talk about skulls with philosophize about death would blow in the face we can say death outcomes and i had the least in mind
but that's not nearly as powerful as that
that's the thing itself as we call data as such this thing itself you don't have to say scala they don't have to say hollow eyes and morgues and cemeteries and stuff is just the thing itself it is right there with us
when you are writing i matches or other knowledge dramatic thing to choose but when you are writing that's kind that which you aren't you want if you possibly can get clear impressions of things see see see here here here here that scrap of dialogue
get that smell smells or bank difficult to describe but smells you know we all know we have certain smells in our life a company childhood or wherever i use have one little sniff and a whole world comes back think what that smell carries either good or bad doesn't matter smell as
an enormously we don't even know it smell is they talk about pheromones is little particles in the air and stuff but this fight hard and last forever
you know certain smell seem to stay right your sinus or someplace near very easily a vote to pay mr we don't even understand actually with electricity as i'm i'm delighted i'm delighted that there are things in r memes remember rochas greatcoat about tom we the fear we have of anything anything we don't have okay
february four we call supernatural and so we close our minds to enormous mystery last night i was talking about the power in auschwitz that you know know my cloak if he's made this wonderful fulfillment that ashes effort to us
ah where was i
i got derailed introduce you might have either
oh
so you really you really do you kind of know this and it you read prose it's full as full of abstractions and cliches but me for dead pros dead thought than whatever has no life and no guts no spirit and by that i don't mean it has to be overawed or purple you have to beware
on the other side of profusely purple prose so cause full of cliches there's no freshness and in at all if you want to read a truly fresh passage and is most unlikely place it's also i think it's as good a description of mystical experience as you can find anywhere and i'm positive that the man who wrote it
had no idea what he was describing he'd experienced it but he divided note mystical experience was and that is in a guy very well known children's book the wind in the willows in all the wind and or loss you don't know it rushed you and a friendly neighborhood a bookstore is a chapter and are called a piper at the guy
gates of dos it's simply a description of dawn and this cut from his way and it is pure opening up to opening up to the universe is just absolutely extraordinary and you do run across these things in literature where the person really knew nothing about his slow experience and yet the thing happens usually
really they suppress it in of enough flour and some what's your name down santa barbara flight crypto said higher
courtois
yeah laura
yeah right far far greater wonderful lady she lives in santa barbara analogous and i went to see a one time she had it as many people have she had an opening at the age of about all seventeen and she tried to tell people about it and everybody naturally thought she was crazy and told her so and they just scared off and she just suppressed it
until and then years later she heard about yassar tiny roshi coming in eu's in in los angeles she thought maybe he has a clue and he just course laughed he said yes this is what we call and opening many people have a outside of zen practice is not an uncommon i was once are working with was working with american indian people as way up and
on blue creek of the headwaters of that call a doctor rocks or whole iraq up their northern california house with a very rough lager i mean this guy who's of part indian part white and what i realized he was extremely rough wood a really nice guy and we were alone upon this ridge above blue creek
rick went down into the klamath river and the sea fog had come up through the delta and then add worked his way around it became like a path and then was going back up blue creek sinuous see fog and it was thousands of feet below us and it was truly beautiful this guy was staring at it and he told me
than that he'd seen this once before like that
and that he told me how it felt and a guy with about one hundred word vocabulary if you really was almost an articulate but he then went ahead to describe this clicks pants and he was so scared and looking at me to see if i might laugh he would beat me senseless of i'd crack a smile
while at a certain juncture there and he just said everything was perfect and complete justice was he didn't quite say that has little bit more like our pilot which is a cliche to
he but he it was unmistakable what he was describing and of their hands to his eyes were missing up as he said i wish is for diagnostic to
and then i did laugh and is it will happen and i said well you just you described mysql experience this is what it is and it's wonderful and i congratulate you the poor guy was so relieved and he told me he always thought he was crazy to have this experience an icon of submit to
you i think many people who come to this practice have had a glimpse of that the light off the pines something happens and something goes past you have other muslims of lost paradise for something and you know something very important as out there that you should be seeing but you're not you know you know there's another way of seeing another
the realm and you have that that glimpse
i got off on that i'm opposite punchy and rambling here sign them
so i've talked enough i'm being our talk again when i have a captive audience
are there any questions
now whenever we to find some tiger lilies pool that was in the new yorker has called tiger in the snow the eerie tack is terrible titles on
but week lawyer
january sixth nineteen ninety seven fascia
cap
through

yeah i think storytelling as an extraordinary important and the important part of our the human culture not our culture all peoples a wonderful stories and have met and everything one thing that interested me about the watson the story and i was my trilogy i wanna
good boy that up but still in it what's happening down in southwest florida right now even though this man was killed eighty seven years ago they are still talking about it and you see the legend of mr watson who is supposedly killed fifty five people he didn't but ah there you see that legend
and gradually turning into myth and the two sides that were against each other that day and one side says they shot in self defense they killed him because he raised his gun and the other side say no you people ambushed him yours set to kill him when he came in on his boat to this land and ads are still being debated and i liked it
to watch that transition of story and a legend and myth is really wonderful but all cultures habits and all the myths we know i think in in traditional peoples who originally stories that gradually over the ears in the telling became fixed you know fixed in the culture and for some reason they're enormously important i knew man these p
people we the stone age people who work with new guinea
he was a terrible coward on the battlefield he had all kinds of moral defects are quite noticeable at once up but
he knew the stories and he was absolutely treasured in the culture for that reason he was the only one that knew all the stories she was very smart they forgave him everything that you know certain the navajo people they tell stories only in winter you're not supposed to tell stories and summer in the summer there's plenty to do
his hunting and your gardens you work or whatever so you save stories for winter on people really need them especially in the northern tribes in us by sileka stories are very very precious the tail tellers are always precious and they have been throughout history even you know we have been writing very long but motto
ale telling us could go on forever and that's why i think as such so important for writers i don't mean you can't do one of a little sketches because even somebody like ray carver he wrote these little they weren't little they weren't because he picked the right details and even though they were extremely spare there was a whole story unraveling behind
this selection retails so he's a real master but the carver imitators and pretty thin stuff and are really are they're not really telling stories and i think most of those kind of things will go away from the future like all dry leaves you know but storytelling for me and writing is very important now i know it
how to fashion that's considered old fashioned i'm kind of old fashioned guy myself now getting top
no longer but am i may be as my prejudice but i don't think so i don't think so i the storytelling is him to come back in the novel and things very very important i think people don't tell stories they're at risk of vanishing forever except in their own little group ah bali that prejudice aside
next question
no question oh yeah and did you come from a wound up lots of see chocolates
at the image which costs
oh yes
with not socks and sandals
in danish
i'll tell you a little song danish remarked
my forbear the first peter madsen is whaler but then he got into be he got his a smart fella probably not very honest we didn't quite well for himself and even for a while he was used the mayor of copenhagen in an illicit government that took over add king christians government through him
that and these guys will be headed and drawn and quartered except for peter madsen sneaked away and later became a director of the royal breeland wailing and ceiling company
he still hated him in copenhagen because he got away with murder not only did he get away but he saw how range things for himself that he got an annual stipend
and from the city from thence forward well i don't know if he is the same ones are very famous danish poem and it shows are really stupid looking guy and an observer derby hat he's riding a pig the pig is going out on a thin ice and falling through i don't speak danish but this is approx
anybody who does speak danish you can correct me as us
off i isn't because on the ice on on creation on a pig
what be edition p tell about tiers
what is the very well known poem and ended at heart
and that's the only danish chandi i know i do know a few years ago i went to this little island called for and i want to see what but there's only one matheson left there and he's rather decrepit figure but are there are a lot of cousins and things they showed me and there was a cathedral there that my
great great forbear he was a great whale or even by their their standards he really was and he was called lucky matthias and matheson son of matthias you know mathewson in their pronunciation
and there was an old woman hanging around this is cathedral that he and his brother had canada contributed chandelier to on some do and they were there
and
lisa we said i had her she spoke so friesian and german and and friesian has quite a lot of english words and tone and that they're also considered to be extremely stupid people are jokes about friesian someone down the coast
anyway i asked we asked heard of you do as they're still do people still remember
lucky matthias
really died and how the end of the seventeenth century
yes and we hate him
has that wow talk about tradition
yeah i'm sorry i'm rambling
ha how had he she are useless in atlantic city
well
he added
well i do i do i do and i have a my own zen group and i'm
and i teach and elsewhere too little bit as for example today last night of a bit but
i really am essentially writer you know
damn i didn't even want to teach very much my teacher my former teacher i always tell my teacher said second ocean he he he wanted me to teach but job now is it is a contrary devil and his you can ever count on will say the same thing twice in row
and as i told him not long ago i said listen you know i'm i wonder about her running a zen group i i'd give it a lot of time i think if you tube again if you do that you gotta do it but i spent a terrible amount of time zen students and i love these people and i'm very glad to do it but i'm also
so are running out of energy on doing i'm trying to a great many different things at once and i've told him you know i really like to go back to writing if i write about
right about buddhism again or something but but but and i'm gradually moving my group over to my senior monk so that is that'll happen but still she is and that and going immediately said you should be writing so you should not be running her sitting group as yeah yeah i got me into this
this it in her and i i am i feel that more and more so i'd i don't know there is a conflict and no question about it and also the conflict as somebody asked earlier you know you the in a way there today no matter how i approach it pull my talking about i'm talking about number
one i'm telling stories that reflect more or less well on myself or on my work and up and people as we often when i give a talk in public i am i feel even if has gone very well i feel a big down afterwards i feel as if i've been eating nothing but the icing on the cake
there's something unhealthy about it you know and even at and away on the other hand is good practice it throws my own ego up the my face all the time i have to deal with that out whether it works or not i don't i don't quite know but there's no question as a conflict here does i does that answer your question
could you are differentiated a story and plot and
says a lot
yeah story it is hard and soup it is hard and distinguished superficially of between story and plot story is is really a kind of i
it's a tale involving is a reality to it shared experience as a story that illustrates something for us to store them it moves us plot is simply plot line grabbing things around so it comes out neatly are not meet the whatever but as a structural thing the i think plotted heavily pie
lot books are really liked for me like a guy like non-fiction it's an art is not art but as an art that you learn it's like detective stories stuff like that they're very very carefully plotted often brilliantly plotted you know brantley plotted but that's what you're reading the plot is what keeps him in the book see how he works out this puzzle is like reading
about a puzzle and that and no matter how much skill he brings to it or she brings to it
ah finally those characters even if they are given all the wonderful widely characteristics and all sorts of quirks they don't quite
they aren't deeply felt by the rider they are simply constructions sometimes art for construction so that you can hardly tell them from alive organica character i've just finished a book somebody thrust at me and i thought where the hell has this writer ben is it is marvelous stuff about world war one
enough and a very powerful love affair
interests and i and my brother i guess i started he'd read it and end up i saw i can't make up my mind whether this is really good or just normally skill well and the end of the book it really unraveled it it was plotted and the plot came roaring out and you simply it was very neat i saw the
construction but suddenly all the staging showed no off it all the whole affair a bet but the writing is absolutely beautiful it's really artful writing but in my view this book is not a great art it could pass forward for an awful lot of it is wonderful it's called birdsong by numbered so
and sometimes book like god is confusing you don't know quite what category to put it in because it's so skilful so well so well written this man patrick o'brien right see tales lot of people like those are very well done for the characters really are beautiful construction and that's not what interests o'brien nor as a wooden shoe had interested the
author birdsong he i think he's interested in how this thing things made an hour effects and i'm sure hum he's interested in his reader more than he is in his own clarity
but that's opinion have i'm sure i would get argument virtually every critic alive on all these things again don't trust my as the i i see it story and plot really a three the characters and probably the key thing you know are these real people that grow out of the author
improving the people of the other sex or are they gay go constructions i'm a paste in a little of this here and a little sex there and maybe a little bit of violence here and we need a little song so here at some carpentry that's not where normal should go
our rb
a combination of
i have a catch
inspiration
i think is true i think you when you begin you have certain ideas for the characters you know you have this person in that person but if they're truly fully imagined do you have to grow into them
this character has has to in some way take you over you have to become that person in this trilogy for example mr watts mr watson's very difficult right about because he's apparently a killer a sociopath who behave immoral as normally most the time and is a very able attractive person good looking
and how do i get into the smile and how do i understand why he comes into this island where he's killed knowing that those men must be waiting for him what is in his head how did this happen and this happen are so many kind of misuse i can't solve that until i'm really in him
just as just as you can huh
i did a book in came on a and dialect and you can't really write that direct i don't believe until you speak it yourself you have to learn how to speak and then it comes naturally but if you're trying to remember how do they say this why you know and even if you're wrong even who if you're just simulating it if if it's felt this way you know you have
f do the how to do it
gloss mantra over here i know there are a few around and but i have one in the room
say
yeah
she lost and river yeah oh here's what here's one as you won't lifted up let me just stop
now you may not think this is as funny i hadn't have a predilection thank you for back country
rural black humor you know and this is a little passage by a man named spec daniels is a pretty terrible guy is a gator poacher he smuggled drugs is and everything he's got a cruel vicious and drunk and i'm a lot but he's funny
i think
as you peg remember where it is
puja he's talking about i try to i'm still i'm always banging the environmental drum and i very very rare animal in southwest florida is the american crocodile which as your nose lot bigger than the alligator and caught lot
are dangerous and potentially least and am but for a time there are enough of them around so you saw that in zoos and stuff and has actually have you ever go to santa island islands a very big one and the ding darling bird reserve their that's come in known as rather north of its range but for some reasons wandered in there
and this i hit this guy is talking about and he's east l e poachers crocodiles alligators drooling at most
in this at this time of his life he's selling crocodiles to zeus and stuff
one time intelligent st augustine had a masood he paid me to hunt 'em up some crocs sure enough he shows up at my house at flamingo got a crocodile's i say sure thing i've got sixteen right out back only thing i had out front was a pink cadillac what the hell you aim to holiday
manage this will crocodile car that's where you're looking at why hail us says i've got me a crock back here that goes twelve feet fill out a whole limousine twelve feet he is i want that one now
so we jump on that crock and ratlam around roll 'em up a new ball get em hump some way into the trunk net old tail wag that cadillac and lick that wrung out like a dank mule and a tin the stall i fling the smaller ones in the backseat they had that velveteen just snap it and grab and and his crop fancier don't mind one little bit take off for st augustine bump on the ground
with a load of crocs he's got in there to beagle ugly cloud of smoke right my yard next time you showed up he bought him a hidden crocodile and cannot see and out crocodile arthur he bought him a hand grondona i had a big hump on our shoulders because a coconut said that on don't look so good my friend i'll give you ten down and twenty five on top
but she goes to weeks so he sent a letter with no money in it notified me she had up denied well the next year as passes through st augustine dropped in the see him and then she was more hump dog crocodile star the show
so his hes my mind that sure is a pretty little and you got in there
when you fell as know some diurnal if i went and hurt his feelings
cause he hollers out no no no that ain't your pretty little hen
ain't her at all spec nodejs more that's the way we left it because she didn't have no pedigree in an oven
he shook his head our lives vicissitudes that fellows your had him a good head for the croc businesses what it was that's how you get you one of them cadillacs iraq
help
well i love that kind of stuff and but i couldn't i couldn't write it if i could and i can i do i just if i go down there and i hear the fusion sentences that southern i'm talking the same way they i'm gonna like a chameleon is awful by go to england i have a sort of british accent
but you you do have to learn that that language and if you don't if you don't think you know i don't write dialect because you're just infuriate your reader muslim hate direct even if it's well done the hit for to get a lot of flak for for dialogue people don't even like to read huck finn one of two maybe two great american man
three pieces or huck finn and moby dick but huck finn great great book and odd people won't read it just because of the dialing
probably they'll have to change all that their pipe the pc groups will take over and they'll put that have to put all our gyms speech back into straight and a harvard english isn't some pity
daily quoted passage important too
oh yeah know him
well this is different this is completely different came on and dialect is is really shaw syrian his old shall see her in english and rhythms are completely different these people and the a lot on the of their law black and embolism indian there's a little bit of english as a little better but who knows what and they're very mixed in cut
our and in background but they all have this is our ancient english per dumb
note on them to do norman i'm going to not do that
i'm in the swamp mood
hey and also i haven't done it for so long one time i i am i had it reading with truman capote he and capote he had that old chestnut that he always did is called a christmas story and it was so cinematic camp the that truman video
and i had to follow that act out and i read from far tortuga and i had to have about six classes of wine to get crack to get cranked up for and i let fly i risked everything and it somehow it it came out right was like remembering a language at all flawed but sometimes it doesn't and it's very hard to mix it up
so on a cop out
anybody else
yeah did

i said well
i get to that having admitted august experimental
reach that occurring
and if if you want to talk about was do or
this may be really i'm at this question i i get asked kind of a lot and i'm always makes you slightly uncomfortable because and see my my response seems arrogant i mean i was a terrific reader is a kid i read everything as down the library all the time i can remember reading books up saying to
clicked on when when writers would would tap into some little truth and by recognize and old ladies that them could i say that how truth absolutely no that i mean that goes as how far i am yellow slips and cards and all that stuff
and i read certainly all the best as gave an old comrade and i think those two it if i had to say with my influence would be a be those two writers but i don't see it in my writing and i don't think so as i can see is a detectable enough at my writing and so when original
it's just writing but i don't see some people you can clearly see faulkner or hemingway or wherever it may be and i don't i don't and then just may be that i'm don't know how much i stolen it's all blurred together but i don't know really who influenced me
rick
i remembered
your daughter
burrows
give him
and ah
he said sonia to be a great powers
somehow
buddhism or so
older version
even in cultures
he nodded
yeah
the novelties theater and western
well no
rollins lady murasaki
the arson
yeah you're ever lady murasaki
it's been a more of and why
yeah i mean i now as you're describing it
very what i think it is i think the tradition of the modern novel goes back to know sixteenth seventeenth century england richardson people like that but dumb
i think the tale telling goes back for ever and the novel and be the form that we put it in used to be an epic poems great narrative poems of enormous language go back a thousand years you know in the novel is the form we we have and then we adapted for tortuga really the former fighter tortuga i used the screenplay i didn't accept i eliminated
all the indication of who was speaking
but it was really is it's sort of and that's where they zen came in i just used
the stairs sparse description and just the thing itself again not that looked like something there is one symbol a cigar similarly that snuck into it and i said a or to is an island like a memory and the ocean emptiness and that that one slip by my my thing and
there aren't very many and what i really wanted was to get what you soon as you put in a similar you're getting intellectual process and you're getting something between you and the thing itself so i would just say that from underneath the galley for example on the ship and little separate galley shack on the ship just no beat up you know kind of thing
and i described the antenna the antenna rather have a cockroach coming out in the so trade when in the source fierce and caribbean light and these two goals things coming out tasting hearing know whatever they do is extraordinary delicate at app
apparatus and it's coming out there which is that need why garnish that what it looks like i say like a radio tower you know i mean all you do is being at crashing down i described the old diesel drums of the decks of diesel fuel on the deck and and and the have as you know drums have a little rim around the top
and they collect rainwater the thing has never straight up in general pool rainwater i just described as shivering of the rainwater in the on the oil drum because of the ships motor
you whatever and just say there was a law a line of short migrant migrating shorebirds the distance i just wanted these residences of the things around there are oblivious to this man's faith is men are sailing towards their doom i don't know what of course but there is a swirled still die on vibrations and
cockroaches and you know just just that and not say they looked like or or like or anything hum
so i don't know that's not buddhists writing and doesn't really answer your question is this buddhists writing
ah
but i don't know i don't nice yeah no advocate that the people say things i got in the same ones who say that buddhism is fatalistic
you know and listen fatalistic buddhism accepts what is in that moment is it and you can't do anything about anything that's passed so to that degree you can say this is fatalism but then you are free in the next moment to do something about it to take care of that as we say
hum so so that idea that buddhism is fatalistic is very is completely wrong as is misapprehension of where it is
it is temporary

seven years now
venice

i will i thought i was taking off the restraints in a way i thought i was doing exactly the opposite
yeah because it by eliminate the speakers the thing that seems to open out i left whitespace everywhere yeah i'm trying to get away from the the shackles of the conventional novel and
did you do event bernard
that
well i actually would like to try it again it was easiest do it where the ship because you have a confined stage and you have a small company of men and other people come and go but mainly it's a small group so that that the reader can follow it the reader can follow it easily anyway after thirty pages afford to our first thirty pages
maybe a little confusing but you never seen anything like that before but after that you are so many clues now i had this theory and i think it really is true especially among a very simple uneducated men
everybody and that we do too but ours may be more subtle we have our life song we really do we have i saw online and i found that these men were singing that their own song over and over and over again and so that almost from the intonation you can tell who's talking and by this time you know them i put in a ship's manifest
so you know all their names in their age and and tried to use the ship's manifest as a device for identifying the characters as all kinds of hints and i make it very easy for the reader in the beginning but after that you're kind of on your own is that is how
clearly you seen the characters that makes it possible well as you know i mean people either hate that book or they love it but
oh
i don't think i answered your question by have an answer the question properly and last ten questions

you're saying to i see the results of my work and positive results on biodiversity and silver

yeah i think i'm probably the least qualified person to answer that
i like to think us put it that way that dumb i've had some educational value i know the other people have tommy those books have had that book wildlife in america was really it was the first book of the modern conservation movement it was even in the copy years before rachel carson who was very very significant
indeed so i like to think that book had some effect and are and other books too maybe and drawing kids into nature study i think this has been effects like that you know pointing up animals that are disappearing or whatever
but
to say that we are winning this war i'm afraid i'd have to say we are not held there are lots of local victories are second birds they're really come back to check the old list in wildlife in america of the threatened species you'll see that many of those birds like the brown pelican and peregrine falcon a number them have come back but a number of others of course
on way down hum
so at last night somebody came up and said to you seem to be a little gloomy about the future the world but it would she real feeling i said how much do you want to hear
and i don't read i want to get into that kind of honor
i think we i think we have to fight i think we have to go down fighting for every species every whenever we have to fight to educate people we have to fight to get people elected who are have some sort of vision
you know we cannot see some of the corporations actually are coming around one of you here is working with the time i was very pleased to hear that working with educating the corporate leaders because they need education worse than anybody
joseph kennedy who was a a boundary a scoundrel a thief and a crook from everything we can hear about him the president's for hopper use a real rapscallion ah the sky but he didn't say one great thing for which she should be honored he said the brain of the american businessman is the most overrated commodity
in this country today
had he should know
but there are some businessmen who are really great i mean they really are trying to lead it back in the other way it and i think it'll pay off i think is the best financial investment they can make a truly do i think i'm the environment i had a chance to talk to secretary bob at last year old and i said you know
your job is the least sexy job in the cabinet i guess but what you decide here ah it's going to be fifty years from now we far more important than a decision taken by the secretary of state or any of the other people your these decisions are really going to hurt or help our country
ha ha i truly feel that i think the environment is and has been for a long time really the feel that young people would be most excited him and helpful to go into i think it's gonna be more and more and more we have no choice it has to become huge cleaning up has to become huge
all the related disciplines
oh yeah
ha
he sat in national
character while watching one
curious
me he the other component safe
so caught up in our culture and as
wow just wow my can file hosting the half half possibly make him for almost half of jan
the factory right yeah
people have to be yes because it is a certain investment time i mean if you're gonna help you have to be generously your time it's really true i think people's people have let other people go to their death really because it was too much trouble you know it's very easy to further remove you know you read the papers two hundred
and fifty people die in a japanese ferry on the honored sea of japan
you don't have much of a motion response but suppose you use your imagination suppose you think of that very overturning and two hundred and fifty people fighting for their lives hysterically or the nurse you think this was hannah errands point and then as you think that your imagination so sky and then you can relate to these feel otherwise it as simp
a a statistic on the page and we very easily brushed off we don't contribute to this so we don't do that you know we can't we and we cut them we can't be a sort of alive nerve all the time you can't do you have to to certain extent you couldn't be a state cop and not development terrific callousness about blood and gore and fear
have a a very strong stomach and is very good you do because otherwise you couldn't do your job doctors surgeons the same so i don't mean that we should all be you know doing that but it you see how easily we do turn off our imaginations and how easy it is under those circumstances not to
take the trouble to to help even nothing's much closer to home you know at it and you're quite right that is the other side of them now
what
i think it's a decision i think it's a decision on on each for each individual's part but education certainly well i mean you haven't i don't think i've ever seen a kid if you'd take them out and show them animals and stuff was fascinated kids love animals and they are horrified at the idea animals my go state
they really are and kids are easily trained not to litter
you know and we do it in i know and admires zendo during the samu that work practice you know we always do if this if it's wintertime there's no work to be done around the zendo i send everybody out on the road and the all a do is pick up litter all the way down toward the ocean and back along the roads and they get more garbage bags and away they go
and up you know that's an awful lot more effective than going to people saying you pig on everybody will y u littering the beach your most people really don't want to do those kind of things in if they see somebody cleaning up after him then you get as you get ashamed what is it people really do have a
auto race visual story just happen videotape i wish you'd explain this i'm i'm an old hanoi no doubt over suspicious but
i i was in the in the airport whereas someone used to know someplace and i was waiting for the plane and they announced the plane people started to board i thought well i'll check out the men's room for a second hand far gone plane and i sit up to quit be and i have this little pair of rather expensive glasses and ireland anyway but i couldn't find her
women
you know and i rushed back to i've been sitting and looked under the seat nothing there was a woman thing i said did you see anybody you see paragraphs as or you see any my pick up she said yes up ah somebody picked up a patent on a pair of glasses upset so i rushed to the counter either do it any by turned my glasses know i three counters nine attendance else had go to the last found
you know about philosopher
and fill out the forms that i said i'm getting on this plane if i don't hurry up i won't get on well i've cited bolt for the plan on the plane i was got depressed about this stupid loss and i thought well hey all these people on this plane were in that same waiting area surely one of them can give me a clue that at least i can put on my form when ice
send it into american you know so i had the steward announce
has anybody on the airplane did you happen to see a pair of glasses in the waiting area and i stood up and nice looking old guys standing up there between the person economy combined like the hopefully i'm not a hand went up
i said ah as to bat so i went back to my seat five minutes later i hear the call bell go
five minutes later
and i don't even notice it because and in the getting to me somebody wanted a kleenex with i'm ah steward comes running down the aisle waving my glasses
and the guy who had him was in first class
why didn't need tournament why did he wait five minutes before answering this plea
what was going on there
why did i tell this story and i will compete in off
hey there was a point out but it was a point in there somewhere
but
shaft as i'm afraid i think for want of a better solution this person recognize their hobbies that they're sitting in first class so this makes a little bit more shameful to have the money to paper for his class which is probably the worst by an american day
you know how but they also know an expensive frame and they see one as you know where those wear glasses as frames on those little glasses choice or the
ah are outrageously high and then i thought hey i need a new pair of glasses august punched the frames lenses our lesson a frame is worth money
can be pretty cheesy but i'm afraid i don't see any other excellent and then i'll also here's another clue the stewart told me was man but the woman had the place told me it was a woman who pick them up pieces suggests that those two are together one
one i've worked on the conscience of the other
what i'm at a more of a conscience and the other and took him five minutes to straighten it out and see him hassling up the first class and
i don't know if you've got a better is if you've got a better solution and the habit of effect
right
he added it
joe harris maniac and
ah
oh wow like me and laughed yeah
hearing
even at last
the top
i'll get me
it system
altair i'll tell you i think because you see it's a little bit like i wrote somewhere about sherpa people of all peoples i've met on earth sherpa and the at the eskimo people so-called are have an extraordinary philosophy and is totally generous is totally generous i guess give everything
you know they're just like that and they don't and shippers you know they may have clients who are extremely rude and inconsiderate and they don't it doesn't bother them they are loyal not to the client they're loyal to their job
they just do it because that's who they are as their training as buddhist as training a sherpa as and and not serving you as serving the dignity of their own job and that lead absolutely liberate them from out in on a spit in that guy's suppers and you know they they don't they don't have to do anything like that
and am i think that's the way we must be we must be loyal to our planet we must be loyal to our idea or notion of what is right our bring things into balance and and the people i'm thinking of are those people who are with robert falcon scott coming back from the south pole i thought about the milanese
in antarctica a few weeks ago and i'm these guys really they got to within eighteen miles with their depot that could get food but they knew they were and weren't gonna make it and they never complained they never talked they wrote in their journals as we all the journals were found with the bodies we know exactly what they're thinking and doing and writing last notes to there
the families wives and children and stuff but they also dave a clear even though long after they knew they were doomed they kept on going that they felt was their obligation they've been financed by the royal geographic society and i felt hey we we are not permitted to give up
and are not permitted to complain because we take responsibility nobody made us go to the southpaw
handa i think in a way that's the way we kind of the much less on scarier dramatic way we have to think about it i think we have to keep right on going to fight for leonard peltier and the wildlife in the whole works i won't go into what my feelings about how and unless return it around as i say our leadership
and our whole you and who we put an office and everything we're not going to change it or not on a success course here things are happening very fast we don't even understand what's happening we're doing so much damage but that doesn't mean we should give up for your own senses of your own fulfillment of your even your buddha-nature on
can say have your own being
spontaneously moment after moment taking care of fix as our training and we take care of the earth to has retract dough
but
part of that is educating your kids other people's kids spelling this because that's what i'll turn it around
i'm running ah
never
it's not because it's not because i i will not be i would more on for congress i like to be a been and dictator for my year
have you know how i could never run for congress i've got i'm a i'm a lefty long standing hum i've been divorced i use lot of drugs in the sixties
come on i be shot out the saddlers and but today
hi
what
august
the product socialist and you elected vice day
ha ha ha to think that you would be very time
you know in vermont vermont's real cranky state
states in the country where a guy at a guy on are you talking about and that he can be elected in vermont and minnesota
and those are the only two i think you know i don't think good work anywhere else
yeah
the sure sure yeah amortized three
with the okay
yeah let's take a break and then law for your life
i never got to your question
by well
no no don't don't don't ask an hour going to break