We, meaning you and me and Zen Center as a whole, are trying to create a situation here in which you can practice Buddhism. As I think I talked about too much last weak, it's too condensed. One of the things I said was that there's no Buddhist aspirant, you know, there's nothing you can take or do or be given that will add something to your life which will make it okay. Actually, you just have your life, you know. but we can try to create a situation in which we can work together. And the idea you can, I say it lots of times, the idea that you can practice alone is nearly ridiculous. Reminds me, the other night I saw a movie in which during the movie some guy kept playing the harmonica

[01:31]

And everybody would tell him to shut up, you know, shut up. And then the movie was a Godard movie and there's a black guy in it and he kept saying, whitey this and blacky that and et cetera, et cetera, back and forth. And this guy kept hollering, I'm your brother. I'm with you, you know, but he was hollering at the movie, you know, and everybody in the movie wanted him to shut up. So, he's the same kind of person who talks about universal consciousness, but he wants to do it all by himself. How can you have universal consciousness all by yourself? It's ridiculous. It's important to know when you practice

[02:34]

much you can share with others, how much your consciousness and others' consciousness can be the same. If you can know that, then you can know what you can't share. But if you don't know that, you can't know what you can't share, some completely alone area in yourself. Maybe with your teacher you share it? I don't know, maybe so. Anyway, last week I talked about that tea bowl, and I'm not talking about Japanese culture as being good or bad, you know, or our culture as being good or bad. but rather there are certain possibilities that exist in Japan. They should also be possible here, and there are possibilities here that maybe should be able to exist in Japan.

[03:55]

Now actually, most of us are here because we are dissatisfied with our own culture. No doubt about that, I think. And there's two ways to meet that problem. One is to reject your culture, or your civilization, or whatever word you want to put. Or you can increase its possibilities. And most people in this country, rejecting our culture and our war, are interested in, I don't know what else, some rejection of our society, or some idea of the noble savage, which is actually a ridiculous idea also. First of all, the savage isn't savage, and he can be noble And we can be noble too, but we can't be noble in the same way. You know, there's nothing wrong with our culture.

[05:43]

It's just that it's only such-and-such, you know? Nothing wrong with the ladies' auxiliary or industry. What's wrong is that it's only industrialized. The only alternative for us actually is to increase the possibilities available to us. So when I talk about the tea bowl, what I'm talking about are more possibilities available to us than we know about, usually. So you should be able to have contradictory realities existing in you simultaneously. You shouldn't try to make everything fit. If they all exist in you simultaneously, then they're not contradictory in some way. But let me give you an example of the kind of situation, this is just a kind of example, a discussion with two

[07:03]

Japanese priest about the translation of some thing. There were several Japanese characters involved, and each person translated it differently, and one was sure and wrote to a scholar. I guess, and found out what the scholar thought, and he also had studied Sanskrit and he knew what he thought. And the other priest thought he knew what it was. So I heard both the two sides, and so I thought I'd bring the two together. They both were adamant that their translation was probably correct. So I brought them together and I said, priest, who is higher ranking than the other, says that, what do you say the translation is, and he said, and I said, well, I think this priest disagrees. And he said, no, he's absolutely right. Well, that's about equivalent to if I said, there's a stick in my hand and you said, no, there is not.

[08:26]

But that doesn't make sense to us, you know. But you see, it depends on what we think reality is. If we think that what reality is, is the translation, we're concerned with the translation being correct, then that's what we try to stick to. But the two priests were concerned with the reality of their relationship. So they tried to maintain that fact So what the translation is is irrelevant. I mean, I think it's absolutely crazy that you worry about what the translation is and interfere with the relationship between two people. Do you see what I mean? Of course, actually, if you know Japan, you know that you can get five or six people together, all well-trained, and they couldn't translate the darn thing. Because there's a certain amount of vagueness which is permitted, quite a lot of vagueness which is permitted. Anyway, I hope you can figure out what I'm talking about. It's not so easy to explain what I mean, and if I explain too much I feel uncomfortable, you know, I don't feel good about it.

[10:07]

He gave a very interesting lecture yesterday and one thing he, first of all he reminded me of things I like to forget, which is the enormity of the disaster of the white race recently, of the killing that it's done, of the war and of what we're doing to this planet. And there's no way we can solve those problems except by having a culture which includes the people who are here. The problem with our culture is it doesn't include everybody. You see, he pointed out there's an enormous amount of hatred in the United States, hatred between white and black, and between men and women, and between rich and poor.

[11:14]

And a large part of it comes from the absolutely crazy idea of equality we have. You know, people are not equal. And people also, if I say this, people don't like it, you know, but if you're driving in a taxi, the taxi driver shouldn't interfere with your conversation. You're not there to talk to the taxi driver. The taxi driver is supposed to drive the taxi. It's not a matter of the taxi driver being some other class than the people or a servant. That's not the point. I mean, it's a matter of role or persona. There are lots of things that I can't do because I have this job. So, like the taxi driver, I don't do certain kinds of things, that's all. So, in a country like America, actually there is an aristocracy which runs things, to a large part. You can pretend all you want that there isn't such a thing, but there is.

[12:47]

And the fact that we force it to go underground, in a sense, is what causes a lot of trouble. So in a country like America, you can't have just a simple system of everybody's equal. Maybe everybody should be treated equally. So you can't have just an aristocracy, or just a democracy, or just anything. You've got to create a culture which permits a great deal of diversity. but diversity which hangs together in some way. So the only way to meet these kinds of problems is to do exactly what we're doing here, is to try to create some way in which we can all exist together. And there are a lot of contradictions involved. Another thing Dr. Konze said yesterday, which was interesting, is that anthropologists and sociologists can't study a culture which is integrated and whole. They can only study a decaying culture. I don't know if that's completely true, but

[14:13]

He said that anthropologists to a healthy culture are like fleas to a dog, and a good dog just scratches and off go the fleas, right? And that's true. I mean, you go to Japan and you try to study, Dr. Kunze said, for instance, he said, he's very interesting. It sounds terrible to repeat what he says sometimes, particularly if you want him to be equal. But if you forget about being equal, because he's a very brilliant man, he said, I am a gentleman scholar, a member of one of the thousand families that have controlled Europe, and no one can study us. It's silly if they think they can study us. We won't let ourselves be studied. No, it's just completely true in Japan. I mean, nobody knows anything about Japan, actually. Because what Japan is, essentially, you can't study. I mean, that's one reason we have such a difficult time in Japan, is because Japan just scratches a bit, you know, like a big dog, and kicks the foreigners out, that's all. So there's a contradiction right there, and I say that what we need is a culture which can include diversity, you know, right?

[15:39]

I'm also saying that a culture which is together excludes diversity. Those things sound contradictory but they're not. I mean, you also have to exclude diversity and include diversity. How can that be, you know? And if you're making a pie or cooking, if any of you, most of you have cooked, you know that you can't add everything in the kitchen. At some point you've got to stop because you spoil the taste. Symphony orchestras can only be so big. They get too big and the sound gets unpleasant. Japan is interesting because it's been able to include for centuries, partly because it lived in the incredible light of China, which was always centuries and centuries ahead of it. for a couple thousand years, that it went through its Bronze Age and Iron Age and such things, you know, like a flash, while everybody else spent thousands of years in them. Japan just would pick up from China what was going on. They developed an incredible ability to bring things in to their culture, which would disturb many other cultures.

[17:06]

make them part of the culture and go on. Part of the reason they can do that or the fact that they can do that is a good part of the reason why they have probably the oldest continuous ancient culture in the world. But anyway, I got a glimpse at life in Kyoto through one person primarily and through a number of kinds of situations which I don't think any other foreigner knows about, actually. I actually don't think anybody, there's not in any book about Japan, some of the things I know about Japan, which are absolutely, as far as I can see, central to Japan, because the anthropologists and sociologists and other people who go there are never shown that.

[18:29]

Zen Center right now is and will continue to be an object of curiosity and study, and lots of psychologists, sociologists want to study Zen. Ten years ago I couldn't believe that the psychiatrists and psychologists had such a primitive idea of the possibilities of consciousness and of our own activity. but now they have more of an idea. So at that time I did little things to try to do my bit to get people a little more alert about it, but now they are more alert and I get all kinds of offers to go to conferences all over in this country and outside this country to present a paper on this and that. And if I say, well, such and such, the reasons I don't want to do it are such and such, And then they say, well, that's just what they should know. You must go and tell them. But I don't want to be studied, you know. I don't want Zen Center to be studied. I don't want Zen to be studied. I don't want any interest in Buddhism. I'm not interested in people who are interested in Buddhism.

[19:54]

If anybody wants to practice Buddhism, they can come here and try. That's all. One, the simple level of the problem is, if we allow ourselves to be studied and we allow ourselves to give papers at conferences and such things, the simple level is that we begin to believe what they say about us. I mean it's very powerful, you get an interest like that, it's very powerful, but really people interested in Zen aren't interested, actually. And a lot of you probably think, you know, the alpha waves and all that stuff, you know, is interesting. It has nothing to do with Buddhism, absolutely nothing.

[21:25]

It's not important in Buddhism whether you're smart or dumb. It's not important how well you think, but it's important for you to know how you think, to be able to notice how you think. So, part of our practice is to Actually, Zen practice can't really begin, I mean practice is noticing, but until you can notice actually what you are each moment, what's happening with you, then you can't really work on any real problem, but that's pretty hard to get even to that point. I mean, like if you go to a movie and it's lousy, you know, or it's boring. So you say, that wasn't a good movie, it was boring. But actually, maybe the movie was supposed to be boring. You have to consider everything from several ways at once, you have to consider. One way is, is it interesting, is it useful?

[23:07]

But just because it's not useful doesn't mean it's not useful. If somebody brings me salt every day when I eat in the zendo, I usually don't use the salt, but actually suppose I never use the salt. So someone would say, well he never used the salt, so let's not bring in the salt. That's completely wrong, because I'm also using it by not using it. doesn't make any sense to some of you, I can tell. So, I mean, if we have a Zen practice which is boring, you know, maybe it's supposed to be boring, maybe that's the point, maybe the problem is that you want it to be So actually it should be interesting maybe, but also you should be able to accept things as they are, you know, if they're boring that's fine, if a book is a bad book it's supposed to be a bad book. And you read it, isn't it interesting how this is supposed to be a bad book. But that's a kind of alternative you don't consider usually.

[24:35]

So the actual taste of our life begins when we're not looking for some interest or excitement or anything anymore. Our life is, people say, you know, I have some empty feelings Sure you have some empty feeling, you know, but we don't know how to taste that emptiness. We contrast it with some activity or some excitement and by the very factor we make ourselves empty. So if we take away the excitement you say, oh this is very boring, you know, but if you can get beyond that point the actual taste of your life is there. I mean, the ordinary day, you know, is nothing but a continuous sunrise. But it's not so interesting as the sunrise, because, you know, it's just ordinary old gray light out there. But our practice is that ordinary old gray light.

[26:05]

So maybe you can see why I'm not so interested in being studied, having Zen Center studied. If they really studied Zen, we could make the most boring half-hour program yet seen on television. But no one would get the point, right? Because they're looking for something. So you shouldn't look for anything. There's also the problem, more personal problem, as part of your practice, is that you shouldn't study your own self or explain your own self to yourself, because the explaining process is a simplifying process.

[27:44]

So if you allow yourselves to be studied, you allow yourselves the most superficial part of yourself to be studied. And as soon as you give form to the most superficial part of yourself, that form has some inertia, some karma. That's one reason we try to, you should be able to be completely free from talking. Because as soon as you think a thought, already there's form. And then as soon as you express it into speaking, it's more form. And then as soon as you do something, it's more form, and pretty soon it's cement. So, we don't talk about our practice, even to ourselves. But there's some communication about it, there's some expression, and we always want to express our uniqueness, but that's always expressed, you can't get away from that. So we create a situation like this to find some way to express ourselves, which is not concrete. So it was interesting.

[29:26]

Suzuki Roshi almost never, for all practical purposes, really never criticized any other teacher, and there are very seldom comparisons in his teaching to other teachings. So you say, here's a man who was open to everybody having their way. And you'd think such a person would be willing then to share the altar with another teacher. Say, here in San Francisco sometimes they had all the Buddhist groups would get together and give some kind of service. He didn't even at first want to have, finally we prevailed on him, to have his tapes, his lectures taped. Because if you should be there and listen, and if it's gone, it's gone. That's all. But it's helpful to have them taped. We made a book. Anyway, that spirit should be there. You've got to listen, you know, to Sukhirishi. When he was speaking then,

[30:57]

There's no way to save it. Part of what I'm talking about is that you have to be willing to die, you know? And as long as you're interested in things, you're not willing to die. So, there should be things, you should be able to take certain things which interest you You hear somebody talking in a conversation that maybe you should be involved in and know about, but you can just let it go. Because when you're dead, you know, you won't be interested in anything. You won't know anything. So the time to start dying actually is now. Still, of course, you go on living, I don't mean to jump off the bridge. You have to be willing and ready to die anytime. So Suzuki Roshi, the next wind bell in the lecture, which this wind bell that was prepared some time ago,

[32:24]

There happens to be a lecture in which Susuki Roshi is talking about shikantaza. It's very interesting because he talks about shikantaza as dying, that when you exhale, and the exhaling is the important part for Buddhists, he says, not inhaling, on the exhale you die. Just let it go. Just the breath goes out and everything disappears and you just go into emptiness. You should be willing, willingly going to emptiness as if you're never going to take an inhale. Completely. Like if an inhale doesn't come, goodbye. So we practice in that way. We sit and then exhale goes. And then, my God, in comes an inhale, so there you're born, you know, suddenly. There's some color, as he says, suddenly there's some color and form again, you know. So in the inhale we have some form, on the exhale we have some emptiness. There's an interesting slip, I want to check the tape on it myself, but

[33:50]

He says over and over again in this lecture, we are too interested in being alive. We should be equally interested in letting ourselves die. And to let yourself die means to drop some of the interests you don't need. You don't have to be interested in anything, everything. Just let some things go, you know. It doesn't matter, actually, if two-thirds of the things which are most important to you in your life you never do. It's all right, you know. You're not going to do them all anyway. And you all are actually going to die pretty soon. Anyway, he says, we're too interested in being alive. But somebody heard it. Japanese people have quite a lot of difficulty with L's. We're too interested in arriving, we're too interested to arrive, but it's an interesting slip because it's nearly the same meaning. We're always interested in arriving, arriving at some understanding or some enlightenment or something, some interest, but there's no place to go at all or arrive.

[35:19]

Do you have any questions? No other Westerners ever sing. And then you went on to talk about something else. When I made a note, the first chance I got to ask you what that was. Or talk around it. That's your problem. I forget about it. Can you? Yeah. Okay. Maybe in the next issue of True Confessions magazine. Yeah. I've been trying to notice what I've been thinking or notice myself, but every time I notice it stops.

[36:44]

Is there any way of noticing oneself? I mean, is there any secret in noticing? Well, the difficulty I have in talking with you is that in everything I say, I can think of about 40 possible misunderstandings that you're probably And while I was saying that, I was thinking of what you just said. Of course, you know that scientists have found that when you're really examining something closely, what you're examining as much as anything is you're examining the tools you're using to examine with. Do you understand? And you're examining the examiner, of course. So the part that you're actually looking at is the lesser percentage than the examiner and the tools you're using. I mean, if you say bombard, you have to send light in to take a picture of an electron or something, or the very light bombards the electron and alters it in the process of taking the picture. So, you know, you have to do

[38:17]

So, the same is true with yourself, as soon as you examine yourself. So, how do you examine, notice yourself without interfering? And also, there are various ways to practice, you know, in some Hinayana traditions, they do everything very slowly, you know. They pick their cup up and, you know, and taste. and they walk, you know, very carefully. And that's one way, but that's not what I mean. You should, you know, if you're picking something up, you should be there with your hand that goes and completely there, you know, but you don't have to practice it by doing everything slowly and deliberately. So I don't mean that. I don't mean to walk around self-consciously all the time, noticing, oh, now I'm, you know. What do I mean is very difficult to tell you. See, normally, Zen practice is based on a very close relationship between a few people. So, for example,

[39:42]

Reb now is my Jisha, and so Reb, in that kind of situation, he and I can spend a fair amount of time together. So in that kind of situation you can develop the opportunity to work with somebody. So actually he helps me a great deal, you know, because I'm rather But say that, this is not true of him, so I should just say, say that somebody is offering, has some resistance, say, to offering incense. This is a very crude example, by the way. Say that somebody has some resistance to being Jisha or something, offering incense, or today they feel a little, or there's something going on in them which comes out in the offering of the incense, right? So just as they reach me the incense, there's maybe a fiftieth of a beat difference, right? So I can, just as I come, I can start to take it and then stop and then start to take it again.

[41:08]

then I can put it in. So he can say, why did he stop like that? So in that kind of minute situation, which that example is already very crude, you see, I can communicate something. He can communicate something to me without saying anything. So I can notice what he does, or she. Actually, as I started telling people recently, I say to myself, he, she, and him, her, so we don't get involved in women's lib and things. So if he-she offers it, you know, I suppose I should call myself Ayu. He can say, he-she can say, well, do you mind being called he-she? Sounds like Polk Street or something. Anyway, then he, she can say, why did he hesitate? So then, as I say, that's already very crude.

[42:33]

So in that kind of situation, you can communicate to somebody something about what you mean when you say, how do you notice yourself? In this kind of situation, you can't really do anything. That's what I mean when I say we're trying to create we. And we have a rather complicated group here of the Roku Chigi, the six officers, or the cook and various things, and then other officers. And together we try to work with all the students as they get more experienced with Zen Center than they get positions in Zen Center, and we try to figure out some way, and we have a rather complicated, contradictory organization in which we are trying to create a situation in which we can practice together. So, it's not, I mean, I can't answer your question.

[43:34]

See, I'd have to know you much better. And you, if you really are interested, see, have to make an effort to know me much better. And if you're not really interested, it's fine for you to come to the lecture, you know, but people less interested in you who don't even come, you see, are the kind of people who want to study us. So I'm not talking about you actually, you see, I'm talking about the problem of how you study something like Zen which can't be studied. So if I can't even answer your question, and you maybe have been sitting a long time and have been here a lot, if I can't answer your question, what can we communicate to a television camera? Now recently I'm supposed to go down to do an interview as part of a third, about one third of a book with Krishnamurti, but I decided not to do it.

[44:35]

I don't know how I respect Krishnamurti, but how can I say no? I have to find some way. Because I don't think there's anything that comes of it. There's no point to it, you know. Just gets, somebody reads it somewhere and so they know about us or me, you know. It doesn't do anybody any good to know about me or us or Zen Center. Somewhere over there in Indiana or Pennsylvania or something. So one thing we may do here, probably will do is we'll try to create a situation where within Zen Center we can have more together practice. In other words, we may have a kind of practice period, but actually what it'll be for is for the students who have been here one or two years and feel the need for more practice. And it can be any student, but it's not necessarily for the older students. It's not a thing like, this is what the best students are doing. It's just for those students who feel the need for it. We'll have assigned seats in the Zendo, and those people, maybe in one part of the Zendo, and those people will be expected to come more often. Maybe not just once a day, as you can, you can live in the building if you just come once a day.

[45:58]

the people who decide to participate in this will come, maybe should come two or three times a day, three times a day or four times a day. And probably they should also come to Doksan at least once a week, and I will probably give a special lecture, maybe on one, three, six, eight, and eight days. you know, the 11th, the 13th, etc. I don't know, or maybe just one day a week I'll give a lecture, which you're not invited to. Just those people who are part of this would be invited to. So we can talk about something more closely than just this, so I can try to answer a question like yours. I'd like to be able to answer your question. And maybe then Also, it'll be different from Tassajara, we can work with specific persons interested in something, we can figure out, they maybe can work with somebody at Berkeley or one of the older students here, or they can work on some particular sutra, some particular idea or some particular breathing practice. Anyway, if any of you want to participate in such a

[47:14]

thing, which would probably last three months, and then we'd decide again to reassign seats and have another three months. Anyway, you should speak to, I don't know who, probably Reb. Also, today I cannot, but starting from next week, What happens after lecture is a number of people have questions about this and that, and last week I was, until about quarter to four, I was answering questions, or just not answering questions, but just talking to people who wanted to talk for five minutes or so. So I think what I'll do from next week is anybody who has more specific questions for one hour, from about 11 to 12, I'll have tea up in my room. So everyone can't come, but if you have some specific question that you want to talk about, we can talk together about it there. That way maybe at 12 or 12.30 I can be free. Okay, thank you very much.

[48:36]

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