This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Well, hello again, Tassajara party people. Tassajara party people. There's several things I wanted to talk about today, and I'm going to see if I can get to them. I felt the last talk I did, whatever that was, I felt like I overprepared. And when I overprepare, I feel a bit stiff and like I'm just... reciting something I've memorized or reading off notes and I don't think that's a good way to do any sort of a talk where you want to involve people. So I didn't prepare. I prepared a bit but not as much as last time.

[01:01]

So forgive me if it rambles a bit but I actually think that's a better way to do it. Let me see. I'm going to start off by reading a few passages in Dogen and then I want to talk about them. Rather than getting into the sort of mystical stuff that everybody likes, I'd like to go into some stuff that is kind of on my mind a lot lately, especially after spending three weeks in Tassajara. And it's not the mystical stuff. Let's see if I can find the right place. Okay, let's see. How can people who are not able to leave family life succeed to the position of a Buddha? Nevertheless, for the last two or three hundred years in the great kingdom of Song, that is China, people calling themselves priests of the Zen sect have habitually said, pursuit of the truth by a layman and pursuit of the truth by one who has left family life are just the same. They are a tribe of people who have become dogs for the sole purpose of making...

[02:07]

filth and urine, my God, of lay people, making the filth and urine of lay people into their food and drink. My God, that's gross. Sometimes they say to kings and ministers, the mind of, I don't know what to do with that one. I'll read another passage. That one's from, yeah, that one's from the 37 elements of Bodhi. And here we go. Remember, if we have left family life, even if we break the precepts, that is better than not breaking the precepts as a lay person. As acts of devotion to the Buddha, leaving family life and receiving the precepts are, in every case, most excellent. Let's find another good one. There are no Buddhas who realized Buddha while remaining in family life. Not even one Buddha among all the Buddhas of the three times and the ten directions, because in the Passover Buddhas, the merit of leaving family life and receiving the precepts exists.

[03:17]

And what was that one where he... Oh, here we go. Those who dislike worldly pleasures and abhor secular dust are the sacred ones. Those who love the five desires and forget... Lehmann Rowe, having left his parent, became patriarch. That is the merit of leaving family life. Lehmann Ho, i.e. Pang, who you may know him better as, threw away treasure but failed to throw away dust. That might be called extremely stupid. So Lehmann Pang was stupid. The reason I bring this up is... The sort of Buddhist upbringing, if we may call it that, that I had, I think is in many ways quite different from what's practiced in the San Francisco Zen Center lineage. And in some ways I feel like I might be the result of some bizarre social experiment on behalf of my two teachers.

[04:29]

And the reason I feel that is, is as follows. Uh, I had, I had two Buddhist teachers, two Zen teachers. Uh, one was a guy named Tim McCarthy, who was a student of Kobanchino Roshi, who some of you may know about. Uh, Kobanchino Roshi, uh, among other things, he was one of the people that, uh, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi brought over to America to help assist in the establishment of this place we're all enjoying here, the San Francisco Zen Center, Tassajara and I don't know how much to what except Green Gulch. And someone can yell and correct me if I'm wrong but I believe, and I couldn't find the reference for this, that I remember reading one of the reasons that Cobancino was brought over was because he and there's one other guy and somebody probably knows his name because the other guy was more instrumental. Yes. We're here to establish the monastic rules of, uh, Tassajara because Kobincino was known to be kind of an expert in, uh, protocol and, uh, monastic forms and rules and ritual.

[05:38]

Um, so Tim was, uh, Kobincino's, uh, jisha for a while, his personal attendant. Uh, so I, uh... It's funny to me because it never occurred to me that I don't know how much Tim really knows about rules and Zen protocol because I've never really asked him about it. But one thing I can say for sure is that he was and remains completely unconcerned with the matters. Now to have been Copancino's jisha he must have known something at least at some point in his life before he threw it away. My other teacher, the guy who ordained me, was a guy named Gudo Nishijima, Gudo Wafu Nishijima, who was, among other things, the co-translator of this edition of Shobo Genso, which at the time it was completed, was either the first or possibly the second complete translation in English of Shobo Genso, now superseded by Tanahashi, Kazuaki Tanahashi's...

[06:46]

translation. And neither of these two teachers were the least bit concerned with ritual and monasticism. Nishima Roshi in fact was known on several occasions to try to dissuade his students from pursuing a monastic path. I remember one incident in which A guy named Santiago, I think was his name. He was from Florida, although he'd been born somewhere in South America. Anyway, he was in Japan and he was desperate to study monastic Buddhism. Really, really was burning to do this. Nishijima tried to talk him out of it. Finally, he couldn't be persuaded, so Nishijima called in his contacts at a Heiji and arranged for Santiago to go to a Heiji and be a student.

[07:50]

And I remember seeing him off. We all had pizza at Nishijima's place. He didn't have, Nishijima did not have anything like a monastery or a temple. What he had was a company dorm that had once been used by the Ida Soap Company, which he was an advisor for. He had worked for a while for the Ministry of Finance, and then after he quit the Ministry of Finance, Japanese Ministry of Finance, he got this job as an advisor for the Ida Soap Company. The guy who ran the Ida Soap Company, Mr. Ida, was very interested in Zen. So he donated to Nishijima this disused company dorm, which was a little three-story building, and Nishijima had converted one room of it into a kind of a zendo by, you know, to Tommy Mattson. But it was not a beautiful zendo at all. I mean, it was functional.

[08:51]

It worked. You know, you could fit 30 or so people in there, although I don't think I ever saw it full. Maybe on some occasions it was full. But every time you sat there, there was a playground nearby and you just hear these kids screaming the entire time you were trying to do your zazen. So he was not interested. A retreat for Nishijima Roshi, let's see, he didn't, oh, I should tell you the other story about him trying to dissuade somebody from a monastic past. Uh, that person was me, uh, and I had been working for Tsuburaya Productions Company, the, uh, creators of Ultraman, um, and the Godzilla reference, since I promised it, is Eiji Tsuburaya, who founded the company, was the special effects director of the original Godzilla films, the good ones from the 50s and 60s. And, uh, so this company, uh, we didn't have the copyright on Godzilla, but we specialized in making Godzilla-esque productions.

[09:56]

And I was getting very frustrated with my work there and I was feeling the pull more strongly of Buddhism and I went to Nishijima's room which is what he had that passed for Doka-san. I never saw him once do anything that he called Doka-san but he would always be available so that you could come and talk to him if you wanted. So I called him up and I arranged a time and I went over to speak to him in his room and I just poured my heart out saying I want to follow the Buddhist path. I want to renounce the world. I want to quit my job and do something Buddhist. I don't think my idea was quite fully formed. But what I meant was I wanted to do something kind of monastic or something. And he said, I think you should continue working for Tsuburaya Company. uh, is what he called it, Tsuburaya Productions. Uh, and that was the last thing I wanted to hear.

[10:57]

Uh, I did not want to hear you should continue working for Tsuburaya Company. Um, but, uh, but I trusted him, and I trusted his judgment, and I went back, and I continued working for Tsuburaya Company, um, until the company went through, if you read my book, Zen, Wrapped in Karma, Dipped in Chocolate, there's all the details about that, but the company went through a whole, um, big sticky mess. and eventually was taken over by another company and blah, blah, blah. Was I fired? I don't think I was ever fired. I was sort of let go and then asked back and then I decided I didn't want to go back. But that's a whole other thing. Bless you. Now I can't remember the other topic, but I'll just change topics. The topic I started before I told you that story. I... I never set out, other than that moment of whining to him about wanting to quit my company and be a monk full-time, I never really set out with the goal of becoming a monk.

[12:02]

When I sat with Tim McCarthy, I was an 18-year-old kid and was... convinced by it. I, I don't know. He was a, he was a very, to me, uh, magnetic type of person who, who seemed to me to be very clearly not bullshitting me. And that's what I wanted, uh, because I had, I had developed this interest in Eastern religions and, um, The nearest, easiest to access Eastern religion I knew of was the Hare Krishna's who used to come to the Kent State University and have cooking classes and things. And they did all the monastic things. They dressed in orange robes. They shaved their heads. They looked very much like holy people. But I could see there was something wrong. And I've told this story a dozen times and maybe some of you have heard it. I might have even told this last year. But the thing, this sort of happened, the chronology is a little off.

[13:05]

It happened a few years after I decided the Hare Krishnas weren't for me, just based on a kind of intuition. But I had been, at the time I had been, when I was into the Hare Krishnas, I had been following this guy who, I think he was calling himself Thapapunja Swami, something like that, who would sit in his orange robes and he would sit on a high stool and we'd sit... uh, at his feet, looking up at him, and I remember feeling like this guy was the most enlightened spiritual thing I'd ever seen. And I'm not sure why I changed my mind about that, but I did. And a few years later, and this is sort of after I, I was getting into the Tim McCarthy realm already, uh, I saw his picture in a newspaper, and he was on the lam, uh, wanted in conjunction with a murder in, uh, Los Angeles. Uh, it turns out, I just re-read the book or the Rolling Stone article that sort of revealed this. Um, then there was a book later on. Uh, apparently, uh, Terry was his real name, Terry Sheldon, was, uh, was not the actual hit man, but he probably arranged the hit.

[14:08]

So he probably arranged to have, uh, this guy murdered who was about to blow the whistle on a bunch of stuff that was going on with Hare Krishna's. Didn't work. lesson to you all, that's not a good idea. If somebody's about to blow the whistle and all the goings on in Tassajara, don't kill him. It just makes it worse. You've got to find another way. But you're Zen people, so you'll find another way. So that really soured me on the whole idea. I had already been very sour on the whole idea of... Pete Townsend wrote a song recently called Man in a Purple Dress that kind of I think expresses it. Man in a purple dress meaning people who go up in front of others being holy and spiritual and really all they've got is a purple dress, you know. And I was already extraordinarily mistrustful of anyone in funny clothes.

[15:14]

My dalliance with the Tapapunja Swami notwithstanding, but still I'd seen the TV preachers, the televangelists and all that stuff. Didn't like them. I can say for certain I would not have been listening to Tim McCarthy if he had shown up in the Zen Buddhism class that I took from him at Kent State University wearing a black robe with an orange sash over it and with a shaved head. I probably would have listened for a few minutes and gone my own way. There is something I've reconnected with Tim since I moved back to Ohio recently. And we were having a conversation about a phrase which all of, well, I don't know, maybe all of you, but most of you I'm certain know by heart, which is neither monk nor layman, which is something that...

[16:21]

Suzuki Roshi is said to have said, looking out upon his original crop of Zen students. And he said, you guys are neither monk nor layman. And I was talking to Tim, who had spent some time at the San Francisco Zen Center when Baker Roshi was in charge of things, but had come too late for Suzuki, apparently. He said that his sort of understanding at the time when people were there, and this would probably be the early to mid-70s, seemed to be that that statement meant you guys are half-assed monks. You're not quite good enough to be monks, but you're a little better than lay people. And Tim said... without having heard Suzuki Roshi actually say this, he always took it to mean, and this is probably something he got from Kobanchino, that, um, that you're neither monk nor lay person.

[17:32]

You're actually creating something new. And that something new is, is important. And, and I tend to agree. My, my experience having living, lived eleven years in Japan is that Buddhism in Japan is largely a dead issue, really. It is, and you've probably heard this before, but I'll say it again, and maybe some of you haven't heard it before. Basically, what passes for Zen, and this isn't 100%, of course, there are always exceptions, generally in... in Japan these days is people who have inherited a temple, men who have inherited a temple from their fathers and are there sort of reluctantly running it, who have spent enough time in one of the training monasteries to have qualified for their position, but who really don't have any interest in doing sazen. They are, Anishijima Roshi described them as a guild of professional funeral directors.

[18:38]

Their main stock in trade is running funerals and doing ceremonies. We used to go to a temple called, oh, why am I, Shizuoka, why am I blanking on the name? Tokayin, Tokayin. It was a temple we'd go to every year to have these retreats. Sometimes I'd go multiple times and be sort of Nishijima's hanger-on. I was never really Jisha or anything as exalted as that. But he would run these retreats, and you'd see the monks at Tokayin. And the monks at Tokayin were not bad people or anything, but they weren't interested in it. in Zen, as Zazen anyway. I would see them rehearsing chants, rehearsing the various dance moves they had to do for ceremonies and things. They didn't join us for Zazen. The kitchen, just to give a good example, in our kitchen here where I've been working the last three weeks, it's

[19:49]

As much as possible trying to adhere to Dogen's idea of how a Zen kitchen should be. Their kitchen had a television set which was running constantly while they were cooking. showing just dumb, you know, the same dumb ass programs that are on during the day or on, you know, in Japan during the day, even dumber perhaps. This is how I heard about Diana, Lady Di dying, Princess Diana, because the TV was on and we could hear it running and you'd hear it occasionally. What the hell's going on with Lady Di? So I think it's a mistake to want to imitate Asian Buddhism. I think my travels, I've been traveling around the country for the past three or four years now, visiting a lot of Zen centers and other Buddhist centers, but mainly Zen centers, and seeing how they operate and being interested in how they operate.

[20:55]

And I see that a lot of people have a kind of Asia envy, and they want to be as Asian as possible, and it sometimes gets a little silly. Whereas some people like, oh, what's that guy's name in Minneapolis? There's a guy in Minneapolis who is trying to be as un-Asian as possible, and he's kind of got an interesting thing going. He's written a few books. Maybe I'll remember his name later. His temple was interesting because he has a big rock in the middle. He won't have a Buddha. He doesn't have any Buddha images at all. He doesn't have anything Asian at all in his place. But for the most part, what you see is a lot of people trying to imitate that. And ironically, one of the things, and maybe people shout and yell at me about this, one of the things I've been on a little tirade against is what I see as a kind of needless adoption. And I think I yelled about this last time. of what Sotoshu has been doing in Japan, which I find ironic.

[21:59]

I haven't been able to find any historical reference for this, so maybe I'm wrong. But just as an eyeball view, what it seems to me the Sotoshu has done is that during the Meiji Restoration era is looked to the Roman Catholic Church and saw how they were doing things and thought, well, let's try doing something like that with our Buddhist place. And then organizing it along those lines. And then we, you know, in the West see that and go, oh, that's the Buddhist thing to do and try to import, you know, weird Catholicism. But my question that I keep thinking of as I work here and live here and do the things here is what is monastic Buddhism all about? And what's it for? And what's the point? What's the point of Buddhist monasteries? And if I thought there was no point at all, and if I was dead set against it, I wouldn't be here.

[23:05]

And I wouldn't have come here last year for a month. When I was invited here last year, and that wasn't the first time I'd been here. I'd visited a few times. But last year, Greg invited me to just come down and give some talks. Uh, and I said to him, I, I really want to come to Tassajara and give these talks, but I don't want to just come to Tassajara and give talks. Uh, I want to get more into it. Would it be possible for me to, to enroll as a, as a Zen student for a month, uh, you know, just as a rank and file summer work period, uh, guest season, whatever it's called, summer guest season, a Zen student, um, and do that and at the end of it give the talks. And that's what I did. Because I was interested in seeing how this place works. And I'm still interested in seeing how this place works. And I think it's an amazing experiment and it's so vastly different in many ways from the Zen I experienced and in other ways

[24:20]

different at all. It has some really common roots as well. But I keep thinking that for Buddhism to have any kind of value or for Zen or for what we're doing to have any kind of value, it has to have value to the world at large in some way. If Buddhism is bubbles of people here and there hiding from the world in, in protected spaces and doing their practice, um, then it's no good. Uh, and I'm not saying that's what's happening here. Uh, but, um, I do feel that, that in, in a big way a lot of what I've seen in, in Asia kind of boils down to that. Or, or even worse. It's just sort of a, it's sort of a matter of establishing yourself in a, in a trade. That's what it seems to become in Japan.

[25:23]

Monastic practice is a stepping stone to establishing yourself in the trade of funeral director. And that's as far as it usually goes. A good movie to see about that if you want to see one is called Fancy Dance. It's pretty hard to come by because I don't think there's been an official American release of it. But if you know somebody who knows somebody, or if I can find my copy, I'll be glad to burn it for you. Did you? Oh, okay, good, good. It's pretty funny, and I think it's a kind of realistic portrayal of the way Zen monasticism works in Japan these days. Let's see. What I'm wondering and what I don't know is, I think what my understanding of the purpose of a place like Tassajara would be as a retreat place to come and to live a kind of monastic life for a time and...

[26:38]

hoping that this will have some effect on how you go out and deal with the rest of the world. And I think that's generally understood to be the purpose, and that I like a lot. My question is... Now I remember the thing I was going to make a point about. Like I said, this is going to be rambling because I didn't, I didn't give notes. Um, is this idea of what, what constitutes a monk or a monastic, what constitutes leaving home, uh, which is the thing Dogen was, uh, ranting about in those pieces, uh, that I read to you in the beginning. My, uh, Gudo Nishijima is a big, uh, Dogen fan. Uh, he He doesn't take Dogen's words as holy writ or gospel exactly, but he comes pretty darn close to it.

[27:42]

I've never heard him, I've only heard him once talk about anything that Dogen did or said that he thought was a mistake, and that was that he thought that Dogen's early death, he died when he was 54 years old, was probably because he tried too hard to model his monastery after a Chinese monastery, And he just didn't really take into account that the physical environment in that part of China that he'd studied in and in Japan were so vastly different and that this took a terrible toll on his health because it's extremely damp and wet in that part of Japan and extremely dry in the other part of China. That's the only time I ever heard him say Dogen made any mistake. But he has an interesting way of interpreting some of Dogen's stuff. Uh, which, which doesn't come across exactly. His Shogo Genzo is very, uh, very straightforward. But when you talk to him in person, you find out these things that he has. Um, I, um, had only two ceremonial things.

[28:47]

And I used to, it's funny, I used to be reluctant to admit this, uh, when I first started out giving talks in America, because I, I thought, well, people are going to think I'm half-assed. But here's the fact. I had two sort of ceremonial things happen to me in my path of getting a robe and all that stuff. I took Jukai, the precept sermon. In fact, it's a long story, I ended up taking it three times. I took it once from Nishijima Roshi as his student. I took it a second time when I got married. A Zen wedding ceremony is a modified Jukai ceremony. So me and my now ex-wife are both Jukai'd that way. And the third time was through Sotoshu. And here's a little tidbit too that gives you some idea. I don't know if anything I'm saying is interesting. It's interesting to me. So you just have to bear with it.

[29:49]

The third one was that I talked to Nishima Roshi about... I was planning to go back to the United States and I said, I'm not on the books at Sotoshu, am I? And he said, no, I didn't register you with Sotoshu. I only know of one of his students who was registered with Sotoshu. And I said, well, I think it might be better if I'm going back to America to get registered with Sotoshu. And he said, well, you don't want to get registered with those books. people for. I mean, this isn't the way he said it, but this is the message he conveyed. And I said, well, I don't know, I just feel like it might be worth it. And he said, don't bother with it. And then I went back to him maybe two or three times with the same argument, and he said, okay, I can do this. I can get you registered with Sotoshu, because he's registered with Sotoshu, so he can register other people. So he set up this second Jukai ceremony, precept ceremony, at officiated by him along with other monks from Tokayin and doing the precept ceremony, the so-called right way, in which I had to shave my head and all this horrible stuff.

[31:01]

I look like Nosferatu with a shaved head. This is why I grew it back. Some people look good with a shaved head. I'm not one of those people. So I did that ceremony, so I had the three. And I think actually Prior to that, Nishijima Roshi had decided he wanted me to be one of his Dharma heirs and he performed a shiho ceremony. I didn't want to say the wrong one because one time I said the wrong name. He performed a shiho ceremony with me. And he did it according to certain documents. I'm not sure where he got them, but it's not the standard Sotoshu way of doing a shiho ceremony, but it's close enough. He didn't do it after midnight. I didn't have to prick my finger and draw blood or any of that stuff. But I did have to write the lineage chart and all this, you know, and blah, blah, blah.

[32:05]

So I did that. So that was my two ceremonies. Sometime... around this time I was having a meeting or one of these frequent little talks I'd have with Nishijima in his room. I said, am I a monk? And he said, yes, you're a monk. And that's how I became a monk. So his idea of shukke, which is leaving home, is different. He doesn't have anything in what he ever did that was equivalent to the lay ordination, zeike, I guess it's called, ordination. Every ordination was a sheike, as far as he was concerned. And there were no requirements. And I sometimes wonder what... Now that Japanese Zen Buddhism and maybe other forms of Buddhism have allowed monks to become married and to hold secular jobs and things, I'm not even sure what differentiates Shuke and Zike anymore.

[33:10]

As far as I've been able to tell, it has something to do with priestcraft. If you know enough priestcraft, you get to be Shuke, something like that. But it doesn't change anything. Or it does change something, I don't know. So his interpretation of what... So he considered all of his students, all of his Jukai having done students, I think a German immigrant, to be home-leaving monks. Although I, for one, didn't leave home. I stayed home. So those are the things I wanted to kind of throw out there. And I... I'm kind of scared to open it up to Q&A after having said all that. But I'm going to. I wrote a few other things down, but they aren't that important. And I have a robot here who will shoot a laser beam at you if you try to hurt me.

[34:15]

Does that spark off anything? Because I'm interested. I'm here because I'm interested. What's your point? Oh, what Sotoshu is. Oh, okay. Yeah, Sotoshu is the... I said this last year. I said Sotoshu is the evil organization in Japan. And then people laugh. I don't know that they're wholly evil. But they're an organization in Japan that considers itself to be the... the rightful descendants of Dogen's, the thing that Dogen established all those years ago in the Hege and all of that. They are a formal religious body along the lines of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. They have offices and they have things that they can give you if you're a good boy or girl, you know, and little rewards and stickers and things you can put on your rocket suit if you perform, if you jump through the right hoops and pay money. Um, there's always money involved in Soto-shi.

[35:20]

One of the things I'll tell you about, one of the other questions, Tai-jun was her name. She was a nun who had trained, boy, I used to know who she trained with, and some of you might know, but she trained at a rather strict monastic order, and then for some reason left that and started following Ishijima Roshi and became his de facto jisha, although he never called her his jisha, his personal attendant. She was the only of Nishijima's Dharma heirs that I know of who did her Dharma heirness and registered it through Soto Shu. So I said to her, you know, I'm going back to America. This is part of that conversation. What do I need to do to become a Dharma heir, you know, registered Soto Shu Dharma heir? And she told me the steps. And there were basically, as I recall, three steps, the way she explained it to me. Um... And they all involved an exchange of money to Sotoshu. And it was quite a bit of money.

[36:21]

I think when I calculated it all out, it sounded to me like it was going to be $2,000 or $3,000. I don't know if that's right. To get all the paperwork and ceremonial stuff out of the way. And I remember thinking at the time, that's not what I got into this for. I didn't get into this... uh, to get registered by some organization because I've given them a bunch of money. Um, registered by people I didn't know who were going to, among other things, give me this kind of fake, um, you guys in this lineage, or at least the one I'd seen at Berkley Zen Center, actually do it for real. Um, that ceremony, somebody will know what it's called when I describe it, where it's, it's the, everybody quizzes the, the person to, uh, is it Shuso? Shuso? I think it's a head student, where they're asked a bunch of... Everybody gathers... Hosanshi? Hosanshi. Hosanshi.

[37:21]

Where they ask them, student. The way, again, Taijun had described it to me that I would have to do through Sotoshu would be that I would get all the answers beforehand to memorize. Then I would appear before a bunch of people, if you're nodding, and give those memorized answers to them. And I thought, really? You know? Really? Yeah. It wasn't what I wanted to do, so I just dropped the whole idea. So I'm on the books at Soto Shua as something, but I don't know exactly what. Just to get my ducks in order, really. I didn't know what was involved in it, so I just, you know, I thought if I had a nice pedigree and a piece of paper to hang on the wall, maybe it would look good. I had a vague idea of maybe establishing, and I've been back in America seven years now, I haven't done anything, but I had a vague idea when I left Japan to start some sort of a group organization.

[38:34]

Disorganization, yes. So a little bit from what you said just sparked my interest when you talked about what we're becoming. And I kind of think about it like evolution, say with sexes and all, like instead of really hetero or homeless people becoming more androgynous. Yeah, possibly. I'm just drawing that as a kind of analogy if we're monk, lay people becoming more... Oh yeah, I think I see where you're going with it. Yeah, and I'm wondering, I like that idea. Now it's becoming, especially, because you're right though, I do talk to a lot of younger people and I realize that these divisions between hetero and homo and bisexual and all that are starting to melt away for kids these days. They don't really define themselves that way, you know. They're sort of mostly one or mostly the other or whatever, you know, but they don't really define themselves so much, at least a lot of the people I've talked to.

[39:38]

But yeah, so the same thing could happen. I don't know. It was a weird sort of moment in the kitchen, probably chopping broccoli or something, the other day when I thought, when I was thinking about doing this talk, and I thought, you know, maybe this is what Nishijima Roshi wanted me to establish. You know, like I say, what I was getting at with that weird experiment thing was... The teachers I had, I have reason to believe, had some knowledge of monastic forms, and especially in Tim's case, his teacher definitely had very deep knowledge of monastic forms. Colbancino decided not to, uh, transmit that part of what he was, because he didn't think it was important. Um, and, and Tim didn't think it was important either, and so he didn't transmit it. So it just got, it fell away. Uh, and is what's left over worth pursuing. You know, Colbincino would do things, like Tim told me this great story about a, a Colbincino ordination in which Colbin wanted this guy to ordain, but the guy was very reluctant to ordain.

[40:45]

He didn't want to go through that hassle, but Colbin really thought it was important. So he's, he got, he gathered, you know, took Tim and said, okay, we're going to go over to this guy's house. I'm not going to tell you what we're going to do. They go over to the guy's house. It's early in the morning. They knock on the door. The guy opens the door, sees that it's Coben outside the door, and goes, oh, no, and starts to slam the door. Coben, who had in his hand a rakusu, threw it through the gap in the door. The door slams in Coben's face, and Coben shouts, it's ordination! That was how Kolben, well, maybe not every time, but that was one of the ways he ordained people. So you can see he was trying to also start something different. You know, I would say just from inference that Kolben probably saw in this guy something that made him think he understood that teaching and Kobin really wanted him, that guy, to transmit the teaching, you know.

[41:48]

And the guy didn't want to do it. And it's almost the same case for me. I didn't quite have to be dragged into it that hard but Nishijima Roshi came up to me and said I want to give you Dharma transmission and I thought you're out of your mind, you know. Me? Come on, you know. That's like an honor bestowed upon people who have some kind of understanding. What are you talking about? And it took me almost a year of pondering this, because he left it. He said, okay, well, if you don't want to do it, you don't have to. And I was just stuck in my mind, like, what, you know? But he said, I think you should. I went back, and I've told this story. Maybe you guys have heard it. I went back to Tim McCarthy, because I was on, you know, I used to go home. I was living in Japan at the time, but I used to go home. every few months or whatever, two or three times a year. And I talked to Tim and I said, what do you think about this? This guy wants to give me Dharma transmission. And Tim's words will never leave my mind.

[42:49]

He said, and he probably wouldn't like it if I told people that he said this, because he always says, don't quote me. But Tim said to me, you know, Brad, there's a lot of assholes out there with Dharma transmission. You'd be better than those guys. And I thought... If you put it that way, then I can do it. You know, if you put it, if you say, inheritor of the great Dharma mind and seal of Bodhi and wisdom and, you know, et cetera, et cetera, I can't do it. I'm going to have to say no. But that's, you know, so, I don't know. I'm sweaty. Yeah. Yeah, well there's that. Yeah, I think that's also important.

[44:06]

You don't really find that too much, no. There's a bit of it here and there. Yeah, I think... And I'm really... I really like that movement, although there is a weird tendency of it to sort of become involved in doing big things for the community. And I've seen, you know, things where it... I think everything that you do from the standpoint of your practice helps the community. So even... you know, these little things like just, just how you engage in the work that you do. One of the things I wanted to point out during that community meeting we had the other day, a little Dogen quote that I've always been fond of, and I forget where he says this, but he says, even doing, even working for, to earn a wage is in, in, at its root, a form of dana, a form of, uh, generosity, giving, um, And that helped me out a lot because hearing that or reading that is when I started to do the work that I did, which was making bad monster movies that warp children's minds.

[45:19]

Monster movies in the sense of these really goofy, you know, giant monster movies with the miniature buildings and guys in the rubber dinosaur suits and everything's great. But... And to do it as a form of generosity, as a form of free giving to the community, because it gives something. I'm not sure what it gives, you know, but it gives something. And I think anything we do, almost anything, within certain limits. But I think there's, you know, in terms of right livelihood, I think there's very few forms of livelihood that can't be right livelihood, you know, concentration camp guard maybe, you know, things like that, really heinous stuff. But generally you can make almost anything into it if your attitude is proper. Although, having said that, some jobs are much harder than others, I'm sure, to make into right livelihood.

[46:24]

I really like what you just said about whatever you do being the thing that you do for others. Yeah. And there's another movie about a funeral situation that came out not too long ago where the guy loses his job and it's a job in the world and he's got to find a job and he gets a job assisting the funeral director. And he's ashamed of his job that he has. But the way that it's depicted with very particular forms and the interaction with the grieving family and the problems, the interaction with the family problems, because the family all has to show up for the funeral. And the feelings that they have about the deceased and each other It all kind of gets worked through in this exquisite ritual.

[47:30]

Yeah. And that was quite beautiful. And then I thought, well, what if there was just a case that the priest tradition in Japan, they were just kind of trapped. It could be. In this role, and maybe Americans that will infuse You know, there will be some... I think it'll come back. Yeah, and I think you're right. And it's not that it's an evil thing that they're doing. There's a few. There's a few sort of indulgent things that I'm sure you've heard about. People getting posthumous Dharma names for big money and that kind of stuff. That goes on in Japan a lot. But yeah, I don't think funeral director is necessarily a bad thing. But yeah, you're right. And I think these things will start to infuse in this... If they start seeing us doing it for real. You know, nobody does zazen in Japan. Nobody but monks. Yeah, well, that's what I wonder too.

[48:35]

Yeah. Yeah, possibly. And different for each person. Yeah, and I think home leaving is kind of an attitude. I mean, if you look at it historically, you think about what home leaving meant for people in Buddhist time, for example. They weren't going very far from home, you know? So you have to kind of, I mean, most of us leave home a lot farther than they ever did. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah.

[49:48]

And in that way, I think that American Buddhism is capable of doing just that, if we're careful about not actually using the practice of the form. Changing the social fabric? Of potentially redefining wisdom. Well, I think, you know, people ask me sometimes to compare, just this is slightly off your comment, but to compare Asian Buddhism to American Buddhism. And I always end up saying, well, I think American Buddhism and European that I've seen is a lot healthier, you know, because people are actually practicing. And in Asia, it doesn't, you know, I won't say across the board, but it doesn't tend to be that much concerned with actual practice, you know. So yeah, we have a potential in this movement, this sort of neither monk nor layperson movement that we're part of here to really affect some kind of change by going out and doing it, by going out and living it.

[51:10]

I think that as a monastic taking up some responsibility for maintaining whatever it is that supports people to do the practice. That's a good way to put it. And I hadn't really thought of it that way. Yeah. Which is... No, and I've never heard it put that way, but taking responsibility for the support. Can I repeat it for the record? Let's see if I paraphrase it right. That the... What I'm getting of it is the role of the difference between a monastic and a non-monastic is that the monastic takes responsibility for maintaining a place of practice for people to go to.

[52:29]

Am I getting close to correct? I would be careful about even saying place of practice. An environment? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. or whatever it is that supports their practice intention. Yeah, so maintaining the, what was the word you used? Rather than place, environment of support for the practice. I've been seeing this hand up back there for 12 minutes now. Okay, sorry. Seems longer when you're up here sweating. I just think the conversation is turning a bit towards privilege only in the context of what you're supposed to do. Yeah. Yeah, well... Yeah, well...

[53:42]

Well, what was the other thing besides not leaving home? Well, I don't know. I don't know. The thing is, I had a teacher who considered me to be a home leaver, if not exactly using the word monastic might not be exactly proper, but at least a person who had left home. And I looked at myself and thought, well, I'm not a person. I've never lived in a monastery. I mean, except for these four weeks in Tassajara last year and three weeks this year, you know. I didn't live in one in Japan. And so I didn't do it that way. So the question is, is he wrong? I know a lot of people who have very clearly said to me, your teacher was wrong. You are not a home leaver. I showed up at this vegetarian restaurant that I used to go to in Nakanoku in Japan, a very small little vegetarian restaurant.

[54:43]

This lady was a Taiwanese lady who ran it. very involved in some sort of a Taiwanese Buddhist order. I showed up there with my shaved head. This is right after I did my ceremony. And she said, oh, why did you shave your head? And I said, well, I did Xu Kei. And she got livid. I mean, I'd never seen her angry. And I was one of her steady customers, too. She got really angry with me and said, this is not Xu Kei. This is not home leaving. You're, you're, you know. She got very angry because her definition of home leaving was not what I'd done. And then as far as she was concerned, every Japanese monk who considered him or herself to be a home leaver was wrong. So, you know, and I've been vacillating because I'm a wishy-washy person, going, well, maybe he is wrong. Maybe I'm not, you know. But then again, I have this, you know, I have this guy who I trusted who said, you're a monk. I have to say, well, okay. That was defined at least by one person that way. Okay.

[55:48]

Yeah. [...] Right, right, you're right, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Blew them up. Actually, maybe they, yeah, you're right, I never thought about it that way. Yeah, yeah, and... that you can be a home leader and be a lay person. This isn't what I'm saying. You can be a home leader and be a lay person or a monk. But if you're a monk, that means that a monastic, you have taken up this responsibility. There should be a burden. It's not necessarily, you know, something, some honor.

[56:51]

You know? Yeah. That's been evidenced by Japan. Yeah. The ultimate social burden that was has been brought to bear in what now exists as a system of substitute. Yeah. So, you know, I want to be clear that for me, it's not that only they're necessarily me... Excludes the... Yeah. Yeah, I've... That was one thing that Tonin O'Connor... Somebody said when I did Great Sky was that they wanted me... They were very interested in me because I was a lay... A transmitted lay person. And I wondered, am I, you know? I suppose in one way I am, but... Do we have time for one more, or do we need to bug off? It's 4.29 in 16 seconds. Somebody's hand was up here, but I can't remember who. We'll go with that hand. You seem to be.

[57:55]

I mean, you're here, right? I'm here. Yeah. I mean, I think everybody, you know, everybody who does the training here is, is, but then I noticed that you guys still do the, make the distinction. So, and I wonder, maybe it's not the time for it, because we've only got 30 seconds left, but less than 30 seconds. How does San Francisco Zen Center define the difference between Zai Kei and Xu Kei? Because I, looking at it from my outsider's perspective, don't, understand what, you know, what the difference is. That sounds different. It's defined as people who have shukai then potentially at some point the opportunity to ordain other people. Oh, okay. That's the primary distinction. You can then later on give jukai or you can ordain other people or start your own place. With shukai. Leslie, even though she has drama transmission,

[58:59]

Or perform ceremonies. Lucky her. Interesting, interesting. Yeah, and I have to go back to work. I have to go back and wash some dishes. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center, Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[59:40]

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