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. I wanted to start off by reading this little thing. I brought this book to read, Jap Rock Sampler. It's about the development of rock and roll in Japan. It's a book I've had for ages. I've been meaning to read and I never read, so I brought it along with me. And it just happens to have this particular quote in it, which is the author Julian Cope, formerly of the Teardrop Explodes, if anybody... He has this little digression here, which I think has a lot to do with what I want to talk about today. And it goes this, like this. Far back in humanity's nomadic days, when rituals were conceived on the hoof, as it were, the temple had rarely needed to be anything more than a particularly significant and time-honored tribal location.

[01:10]

A great tree where great-grandfather had had a meaningful dream, a natural gorge where the echoes seemed to repeat everything spoken by the shaman's voice, an isthmus of land bisected by two fast-flowing rivers, anywhere the shaman could contain the family band or tribe long enough to show them the illusion that they were being addressed by the gods. I like that. In relation to Dogen's monasticism and what we have here in America, my experience a couple of days ago... I don't know, it shaped what I wanted to talk about. I'm working in the dining room crew and as part of the dining room crew I am often working till very close to when evening zazen starts. So I couldn't make it.

[02:13]

You know, there was no way I was gonna get there in time. So I went back to my room And I did what I've always done, what I've done for years and years, which is fold up the pillow into just the right size and sit there staring at the wall of my room. While everybody else was up in the Zendo with the ringing bells and clacking things and the little drums and all that, I was alone in my room. And it occurred to me, I also missed zazen the following day, so I went and sat in the zendo. So two times I did it consecutively by myself. And it kind of reminded me of what my initial practice had been with zazen, which is that that's the way I did it.

[03:17]

When I started, there was no... temple or anything involved. There was a guy named Tim McCarthy who taught me how to do zazen and I wouldn't have known where to get a cushion if I could have afforded one and I couldn't afford one anyway. So rolled up towels, bed pillows, all kinds of things served the purpose. So it was the complete antithesis of monastic practice. And that's what most of my practice has been. It was only much, much later that I got into anything like, even remotely resembling anything like monastic zen. But the second teacher I had was this guy named Gudo Nishijima, who was the co-author or co-translator of this version of Shobo Genzo, which was, at the time... the only complete Shobo Genzo available.

[04:21]

And I think remained that way up until the, what was it, two years ago when Kaz Tanahashi's version appeared. In English, I mean. Other people have done partial versions, but this was the first complete version. So, Nishijima Roshi was familiar with monasticism. and he was a great fan of Dogen. He was ordained by a guy named Niwa Rempo. He was given his Dharma transmission by Niwa Rempo. Niwa Rempo, at the time that he gave the transmission to Nishima Roshi, was the abbot of Aheji, which is a monastery some of you probably have heard of. That was when Dogen established. And... But Nishijima was also a guy who was not very much into monasticism, but he was a huge fan of Dogen.

[05:25]

And he actively even discouraged his students from pursuing a monastic path. There was a guy, what was his name? Sanji or something like that? Sanji? Anyway, he was a guy who was... mostly American. I think he was born somewhere in South America, but raised in Florida. And he really, really wanted to go to Eheiji and do the whole Eheiji training period thing. So Nishijima made the proper calls for him after trying to talk him out of it. And this guy ended up going to Eheiji and getting kicked out within like three days because he couldn't speak enough Japanese to handle it. But I'd like to read a little bit of a thing called Shuke Kudoku, which The Merit of Leaving Family Life. I don't know what Tanahashi Sensei calls it.

[06:25]

Probably something similar. And it's chapter 86. I noticed this weird discrepancy between the Tanahashi and Nishijima versions in that the numbering is one-off. So if it's 86 in Nishijima's, it's 87 in Tanahashi's. I don't know why. Somewhere in there, there must be an extra one. In his introduction, Nishijima, the guy who was kind of anti-monastic, says shutsu, shuke is the word we're talking about. Shuke is the... probably some of you are familiar with that because it's a ceremony. Shutsu, which is the first character, means to get out of or transcend and kei means house, home or family life. And kudoku means merit. So shukkei kudoku means the merit of leaving family life. In this chapter, Master Dogen praised and emphasized the merit of leaving or transcending family life. Most people are brought up within a family and the influence of our family has on us

[07:32]

often is much stronger than we realize. The aim of studying Buddhism is to realize what the truth is. To achieve this, it is necessary for us to transcend our family life because the habits we form and the influence that our family has on us tend to prevent us from seeing clearly what the truth is. And, um, that's it. Okay. Um, and the chapter begins with a quote from Nagarjuna. Bodhisattva Nagarjuna said, someone asks, this is Dogen now, not Nishima, with the lay precepts we are able to be born in the heavens above to attain the Bodhisattva way and to attain nirvana. Why then is it necessary to rely on the precepts of those who have left family life? And I reply, it's not clear if I reply refers to Dogen or Nagarjuna. Interesting.

[08:34]

Okay. I was reading it initially as being Nagarjuna's reply, but now I'm thinking, oh, no, no, it's italicized. It's italicized, so it is Nagarjuna's reply. Although both lay people and monks can attain salvation, still there is difficulty and ease. Lay people's livelihoods have all sorts of jobs and duties. If they want to concentrate their minds on the truth and the dharma, their trade will deteriorate. And if they concentrate on practicing their trade, matters pertaining to the truth will deteriorate. They should be able to practice the dharma without selecting and without abandoning one or the other, which is called difficult. If we leave family life and part from secular society to eradicate miscellaneous irritations and disturbances and to concentrate the mind solely on practice of the truth, it is called easy. Further, family life being disorderly and noisy, with many jobs and many duties, is the root of hindrances and the seat of many sins.

[09:35]

It is called very difficult. If we leave family life, we are... Like, for example, a person going off to stay in a deserted place among empty fields and making the mind whole so that there is no mind and no concern. We are already rid of inner thoughts and external matters have also departed. And then there's a verse after that which I'm not going to go through. This particular fascicle or chapter by Dogen... is kind of an interesting one, because for one thing, it goes on way too long. And for another thing, it is dated 1255. Those of you in the room who are Dogen scholars will recognize that, or will realize, I don't know. Dogen died in 1253. So the fascicle is dated 1255. which makes it a little bit of an oddball.

[10:40]

And the theory, I'll just read you, because it's very short. This is what Nishijima's footnote says. This is one of the chapters of the 12-chapter edition of Shobogenzo written by Master Dogen in the last years of his life. Master Dogen died in 1253. He had given a short lecture on leaving family life, chapter 83, Shukkei, In 1246, it seems likely that with a view to giving a longer lecture on the merit of leaving family life, Master Dogen selected many relevant excerpts from sutras and prepared comments on them. And that after Master Dogen's death, his successor, Kol and Ejo, we chant the name of every morning, edited Master Dogen's draft and added this concluding note, which it says, a day in the summer retreat in the seventh year of Kensho. So it seems... most likely that this was not really intended in the form that we have it now, that it was probably notes for something that was going to be completed later, which would account for its kind of annoying repetitiveness.

[11:53]

I'm not going to try to read the whole chapter to you. You can go to the library and read it if you want. It's... It's very repetitive. It tends to say the same thing over and over and over, uh, that, uh, that, um, being a monk is better than being a lay person and here's why. But he never, um, for my money, having read this a few times in my, in my career, he never really says why. I mean, not in the way that we are used to having somebody explain why something is necessary. He just gives a lot of examples. But one of the things he says at least twice in here, which probably he would have edited it, is... is breaking the precepts, having left family life, which is doing shuke and becoming a monk, is better than keeping the precepts as a layperson.

[12:55]

Because with the precepts of a layperson, we do not realize liberation. And he says that a number of times, and that's one of these sort of problematic bits of Dogen. Because early in his career, he seemed to take... quite the opposite view, that lay people were just as able to realize the truth as monks. But a lot of people wonder if he changed his mind. I have a slightly different opinion, although my theory is probably just as much BS as anybody else's. Where's my little notes? I kind of feel... that when he's saying some of these things it would be a bit like maybe an Alcoholics Anonymous counselor telling a person who's alcoholic that the only possible way they're ever going to get well is by joining AA and following the 12 steps and getting a sponsor and doing the whole thing.

[14:05]

It's an AA counselor's job to say that. It's part of how AA works its magic, you know, is by the members of the organization having extreme confidence in it. But it isn't really empirical truth, you know. I mean, there are examples of people who do get well without AA, and there are examples of people who go through AA and don't get well at all. So in the same way, I think... Dogen is taking on or taking very seriously his role as the leader of A.H.G. and his role as the teacher to this group of monks that he's overseeing. And in order to make that work he's going to say that this is the only possible way you're ever going to attain liberation because why else would you ensconce yourself out

[15:10]

in the mountains of Fukui Prefecture. And Fukui Prefecture is still in the middle of nowhere. So it was super in the middle of nowhere in those days. And do all this tough practice unless you thought that it was really worthwhile. His rules for what monks and I was going to say monks and nuns it's an interesting thing I have spent a little bit of time whenever I get time free from either bullshitting with people or working which often amounts to the same thing I've been trying to find out a little bit of certain questions that I've always had about Dogen's actual history.

[16:15]

And what I found is even in a well-stocked library of Dogen stuff like Tassahara has, it's hard to come across certain information like who studied with him and what was going on there because he didn't write a whole lot about that. And we really only have his words. But I did find a couple of references. One in an article about the history of the Ehe Kouroku, which is the other major work of Dogen's, although it was written by somebody else, one of his disciples, based on what he heard from Dogen, rather than being written in Dogen's own hand. And in the Eihei Kouroku, there is a mention that the Dogen had 31 students at Koshinji Temple, which was the temple he had before Eiheiji, among whom were some nuns and some Confucianists, which I find interesting.

[17:19]

And there's another mention that in Eiheiji, which... had more people, I believe, but the thing I was reading didn't say how many. Many of them were not necessarily adherents of Soto styles and Buddhism, you know, although Dogen even rejected the whole idea of there being anything Soto, you know, Soto Shu, you know, the Soto Shu that was established in his name. Probably doesn't want you to know that he said there was no such thing as Soto Shu. But he... So that... That was interesting to me because I sort of always had this image of a kind of a purity in his place by contrast to what we might have at a place like Tassajara where people aren't necessarily in it for the Soto Zen, whatever they are. We had... One of the years I was here in the summer, one of the people on the...

[18:25]

I think she was on dining room crew, was observing Ramadan at a Zen monastery. I thought that was an interesting thing to be observing Ramadan at a Zen monastery. But it seems like even Dogen's, even among Dogen's original group of followers, there was somewhat of a diversity of opinion. And this is also the case with the ancient monasteries, the ones that he visited in China. as well as the ones that were being established. The Chinese monasteries tended to be, um, for example, Dogen's, uh, teacher, Tendo Niojo, um, Tianteng Juching, if you want to use the Chinese, I think around here people more often use Juching. Um, he was a Soto monk, uh, but the, when, um, when Dogen had originally gone to, um, Mount Tendo, that's the Japanese name of it.

[19:29]

The head monk there had been a Rinzai guy. So apparently they were appointed by the, I think by the government or whoever was in charge of that kind of the political organization of some sort rather than the temple being passed down to a successor within the lineage of the teacher who was there. And it was the Japanese who kind of came up with the idea of temples staying within a single lineage. And that was something that happened. So that's a more recent development. So what I was getting around to... Oh, what I was getting around to is even at Eheiji, a lot of Dogen's followers weren't committed... Soto Zen students, a lot of them were followers of the Daruma school who just happened to like Dogen's style or something. I don't know who just stayed with Dogen. So it was a mixed bag.

[20:30]

But he had a lot of rules for what monks could and couldn't do. And most of these are available... in this nice little book by Taigen Dan Layton, and also there's another book over in the library, but this one's much, this one's the one you can find in Amazon and stuff. There's one put up by the Soto Shumucho, which contains pretty much the same stuff, except it's got notes that I like, and a lot of notes on Japanese that will, in parentheses, give you the actual Japanese, if there's a word that might be interpreted numerous ways, you know, sometimes. I like that. Well, I mean, because I can read Japanese, it's useful for me, but I think it can be useful for anybody if you want to look into that kind of stuff. But my friend Patrick here pointed one out which I liked, which I want to read to you.

[21:35]

It's rule number 42 in the Dharma when meeting senior instructors. If you meet a senior on the path, bow with inclined body and then follow behind the senior. If you receive some instructions from the senior, simply obey it and then return to what you were doing. So the rules at A. Heiji were kind of like that, which are a little different from the Shingi that we have here at Tassahara. Of course, I think they should give that rule. we should have that rule in Tasselharam there's all kinds of things about this senior and junior thing if you see a senior has forgotten something by mistake pointed out courteously I wonder why that came down when a senior has not yet sat down do not seat yourself first when a senior has not yet bathed do not bathe first we'd have to have a whole other thing over there

[22:42]

When a senior has not yet started eating, do not eat first. When a senior is not yet asleep, do not go to sleep first. That's interesting. You should not ignore a senior and engage in pointless argument or inquiry. I'm not sure how that's defined. But one of the interesting things I found in looking at this and then looking at the Tassahara Shingi is that there is, there's nothing I could find, and I'll say I didn't read every single word of this, but I went through it pretty, you know, as thoroughly as you can go through it without reading every single word, and these things tend to pop out. And I've read it before. So I'm not completely ignorant of it, but I went through it again trying to see if I'd missed something.

[23:47]

There's nothing about sex in here. Which, of course, as we all know, the Tassara Shingi has several. How many rules? How many rules are in there? Do you know, Greg? Many. Yeah. The number of bullet points is... One, two, three, four, five. Five bullet points in relationship practice. Which, the reason I bring that up is I find it interesting because it's curious to me because it's not as if Dogen would have been unaware of monastic regulations covering that subject. because the Vinaya or Vinaya the ancient Indian monastic regulations are jam packed with very specific and arcane and sometimes weird rules about sex and I think we can reasonably assume that Dogen must have been familiar with those so why doesn't he mention it and this got me kind of scratching my head and wondering and

[25:11]

I can only come up with my own slightly dumb theories. I don't know if they're dumb. Based on my experience living in present-day Japan for 11 years, which is that in Japan there tends to be a kind of a custom, maybe you can tell me if I'm right, of leaving certain things unmentioned and everybody is supposed to understand them. Is this true? Yeah. I often found this was the case in the company that I worked for and in the society that I lived in in general. Lots of things went unstated. And I don't know if it's because those things were uncomfortable to talk about or what the reason was, but they just were not stated. So we don't really know what Dogen's point of view on that was.

[26:15]

At all. He doesn't say anything. I would assume that his monks were supposed to practice complete celibacy, as would have been the custom. But I also know that a few interesting things happen in Japanese history, one of which is when Japan being then, and not so much now, but being then a very, very, well, it still is to a great degree these days, but not as much as in the past, a very socially stratified culture. And so it was almost akin to the caste system in ancient India or in even not so ancient India where you weren't supposed to move around in your caste. And one of the ways you could get out of whichever caste you happen to find yourself born into in Japanese society was to become a monk.

[27:21]

then you were considered a sort of casteless person because monks were sort of outside of that system. So the rules that were set up for monks were matters of law, and there were legal punishments. You could even be executed for them. So there was a... I wish I could be... brilliant and come up with this right off the top of my head, but there was a set of laws on the books in Japan for many, many years whose name translates to something like sex and meat laws, which were the laws that had to do with what monastics could and couldn't do. So you could actually, if you were a monastic and you were caught eating meat or getting some hot meat, you could be punished by law.

[28:25]

In the oldest times, you could actually be executed for it. That didn't last too long, but there were still legal punishments up until the 1860s for that, at which time they were all struck down. So Dogen lived at a time when... monasteries in Japan, Buddhist monasteries in Japan were just getting started. It was a fairly new thing. So I don't know if any of these laws were in place in his day and maybe that's why he ignored saying this because it would be just matters of law and everybody would know what was illegal and what was legal. Or if he just left it out. I just find that a fascinating aspect of it. And let's see. Oh, oops, I'll get that later. Let's see. What else can I tell you? Maybe that's it. Well, the question for me about Dogen's monasticism is how much is worth following now.

[29:37]

The Japanese monasteries, such as Eheiji and some of the other training monasteries, tend to take... Dogen's stuff literally, which is also another interesting thing because Dogen's rules, even his monastic rules, just like the Shobogenzo, were more or less lost for hundreds of years. What happened was somehow the Soto temples that existed got by without a list of specific regulations. at least not these A-Hei-Shingi regulations for hundreds of years, until the 1600s when the Obaku school of Zen came out and published, I suppose... made available their list of monastic regulations. And a lot of Soto people said, why don't we study these regulations, which led to higher-ups in Soto digging through the archives and looking to see if Dogen had written anything, whereupon they discovered that Dogen had written some monastic regulations and they made these available.

[30:48]

But I don't know how... how useful it is to follow Dogen's regulations to the letter. It all depends on what you're after, what you got into the practice for and what you expect to get out of it, and how much you want to follow a lot of these rules in getting. that I'll leave you with or I'll stop with and then go to, you know, just open it up for discussion. The thing that struck me when I was sitting at the, you know, when I mentioned that I was sitting in my room in the loft there, was Zazen belongs to me. I mean, this is how it sort of popped into my mind.

[31:53]

It's not somebody else's property. And I think that's the case for all of us. Zazen belongs to us. And the thing I believe in most, if anybody wants to know what I believe in most, is the zazen practice. And the stuff that accrues around it is to me... not so important. It's more or less arbitrary. It exists to help the practice. That's what I take out of Nagarjuna's statement that I read from Dogen, the Dogen quotes. That zazen belongs to us and it's not something that happens when a bell rings, for example. Uh, it's not something that happens when, when there are clappers that call you to go to a certain room and, and to sit there.

[32:54]

Uh, it's, it's something that's much more basic and much more, uh, real than that. And the thing I, the thing I like most about this practice is its, is its incredible, uh, portability, you know. I've done it in hotel rooms and punk rock houses and basements and all kinds of horrible places that you wouldn't think it was possible. And I don't know if my sort of dogged, stupid commitment to it is unusual or something. But I've always found it easier just to do it... to do it that way, to make it my thing. And I don't know if that little nugget is useful to anybody, but I thought I'd end there, and then if anybody wants to ask me anything and talk about it, we can go from there.

[34:04]

Yes, ma'am. So when did things shift from monastics being celibate to having temple wives and getting married and whatnot? And can nuns do the same thing? Okay. These are good questions. The shift, you can actually date the shift. It was 1868 pretty much. That was the date the Meiji Restoration got underway. And... My understanding of it is that the Japanese were trying to westernize in all areas. And one of the things they found was that other countries didn't have laws regulating whether monastics could have sex or not. So they got rid of those. It had already... Those rules were already falling apart. There were a lot of... unacknowledged temple wives in Japan already.

[35:05]

So this was sort of an acknowledgement of something that had been going on for years anyway. So officially it just came down. And I've always thought that it would have been possible for the Soto organization, I don't know if it was called Soto Shu at that time, to have said, okay, those laws aren't on the books, you know, any more in the legal codes, but we could still follow them. But that isn't the route they chose. They did that. Now, as to whether nuns can do it or not, the last... Well, the last book I looked at in that, I don't remember being really very clear on that question. I'd always assumed that if... If you could have a temple wife, you could have a temple husband. Does anybody here know, actually? And I believe that's the case. But I don't know for sure.

[36:07]

I don't know either, but I know the one woman I have interacted with and had several conversations with, who trained in a women's monastery in Japan, had been celibates since she joined that monastery. She was at the monastery. Now, I mean, I don't know, maybe that's a personal choice, although I was always having the impression that that was... just part of the deal. It might be. It might be. Because fairness, sexual equality is slow to come in Japan. Do you know the answer? No. But I had always heard that, I think I heard, that Meiji government also were trying to make a move to decentralize the power. Yeah. So they said... all you guys get married. I thought they were forcing them to get married and starting the family temple system so they could decentralize the authority and the power.

[37:08]

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true, too. So I don't think the Soto organization had much choice in the matter. They were kind of told to do that. I think I have an answer to the non-Christian question. To put it out there, I recently read Japanese Temple Buddhism by Kavel. And he makes the point that in contemporary Japan, there are actually nuns, whereas there aren't actually monks as a lifelong practice. There are priests who do a stint in a monastery. But there's this kind of third movement. So there are male priests who are temporarily monks. Yeah. There are female priests who are presumably temporarily nuns. But then there's a third stream of, like, lifelong celibate nuns. That actually sounds, yeah.

[38:08]

I mean, I'm sure you're right in what you're saying, and it sounds like the way things were done. And I also know that the rules of celibacy, I mean, you do have to be celibate while you are doing your training as a monk in Japan. although once you're done with your training, you don't have to be. So, yeah, as a monk, you are trained to be a priest. So the idea of, you're right, the idea of a lifelong monk is not really something that happens, you know, which is... which sort of, you know, when we think of, we're using these words from the Catholic tradition, like monk and nun are from the Catholic tradition, so you expect it to follow something like that, but it doesn't actually, you know, monks in the Catholic tradition are monks for life, and they don't, you don't get out of it, you know. Yes? Yes, ma'am. I don't know. That's a good question. I wouldn't think there's any sort of... For a temple wife, basically you're like a pastor.

[39:13]

You're like a parish pastor who goes out and ministers to the village, the local village. So your wife is just your wife. She doesn't necessarily have to be anything connected with... Unless she wants to be. You would expect somebody who married a monk would have some interest in practice or something. But, you know, the thing about Japanese Zen is that there's not a whole lot of commitment to practice over there. One of the things Tim, my first teacher, Tim McCarthy, had told me when I was going to go to Japan was that he thought I would have a hard time finding somebody to continue Zazen practice with over there because he had heard from Koban, his teacher, Koban Chino Roshi, that basically your average Zen priest...

[40:16]

in Japan was a priest. They weren't interested in doing zazen. They weren't interested in continuing that. For them, basically zazen is something they had to do as part of their training. And now they're done with it. You know, and they don't have to do it anymore. And they don't want to do it anymore. You know, that was a thing, one of the things that's really unique about this place is that it was started by Shunryu Suzuki, who was heavily influenced by Kodo Sawaki. And Kodo Sawaki was a Zen monk who was very much committed to Zazen. And Suzuki was also committed to Zazen. And he was, the Soto Shu didn't send him over to start the San Francisco Zen Center, you know. They sent him over to minister to Japanese immigrants in San Francisco and do their funeral ceremonies and their whatnots and their coming of age ceremonies and this and that. They did not expect him and I don't think they liked it when he started just admitting anybody who wanted to to come in instead of Zen.

[41:25]

So that's a roundabout way of answering your question. Yes, sir? I don't know if there's so much of a question, but I just, I found it really interesting, the part where it was quoting Jarjana, and I mean, I get that overall in that fascicle, he's basically saying, you know, gain-honastic practice, food, lay practice, but what I heard when you were quoting it is, he's saying... domestic practice easy, late practice hard. And so, in a certain sense, and this is what I feel like I've gotten from practicing with a few different teachers who I really respect and who have done a combination of domestic and late practice, that, you know, in one sense, being able to walk that path as a late practitioner, if you can actually face that difficulty and engage with it, actually, that's like a really high practice, you know? And certainly, you know, I mean, that practice is incredibly challenging, but in another sense, what I heard Tim say this one time, he said, well, in another sense, I was there doing it, you know, with COVID, it was easy, because it was just doing it.

[42:37]

It was just being done. Well, there's nothing else to do. It's kind of, you know, interesting, because I think sometimes there's this mentality of this assumption, and I've had it too, that like, Oh, monastic practice with the robes and the bells and all that, that's like the true practice and the really hardcore stuff. But actually a lot of these people, like Angie Boyce today, we've raised a family and children, and she's a Dharma teacher now, and that's hardcore practice. Raising a family and practicing rigorously enough to have the depth of understanding that she has. I just admire that. I admire both, but I really admire that sort of, I mean, it must have taken so much for her to do that. Well, it's a different kind of commitment. And I think, you know, if you're going to pursue the lay Buddhist... path. I mean, you have to be able to, you know, if you're going to do a sort of a Zen practice as a lay person, one thing you have to be able to do is set an alarm and get up in the morning and do your Zazen before you go to work, you know, those kind of things.

[43:50]

And I think for a lot of people that's real difficult. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I'm I'm reluctant to say this because it sounds like bragging or something, but it's not. I just didn't find it that difficult. I just kind of knuckled down and did it, but maybe that's just my personality. I just do that. But there's nobody watching over you and there's nobody telling you you've got to do it. You've just got to do it. Even on days when you don't want to, you have to knuckle down and do it. And that can be difficult because there's all kinds of other things you could be doing and it's very easy to tell yourself you ought to be doing those things because there's so many of them to do. I ought to be seeing the new Spider-Man movie or whatever it is.

[44:51]

I've come up with a lot of those. But you've got to... do it. This question of whether the depth of realization is any different, who knows? How can you measure that? I am going to come with an enlightenment-o-meter and we're going to mark this and we're just going to measure people's enlightenment. We're going to stand outside on Hollywood Boulevard like the Scientologists do and measure people's enlightenment. They actually do that. They have this little E-meter to measure how many aliens you have stuck to your body, I think. But yeah, it's a difficult practice, and it requires a certain amount of commitment and just doggedness, I think. Yes, sir? Yeah, I agree with Nagarjuna. Actually, Brad, I do think you're an outlier.

[45:54]

an outlier. Yeah, I think you're like on the belt of way over here. Most people I know when it comes to steady, consistent practice really benefit from the support of the Sangha. Yeah. Practicing with the Sangha, whether it's residentially or not. I know a person who goes to City Center who used to live pretty far away and walk like very early in the morning and sometimes see him and It came every morning, you know, and I was like, you know, that's impressive. You know, well, what's that about? And his answer, I liked a lot. He said, well, I know it's going to happen whether I'm there or not. Yeah, yeah. And that was the support for him. Yeah. That's certainly been the case with me. I've done very little on my own account, on my own inspiration. And I do find that it's like, well, do I feel like it or not?

[46:58]

The answer is usually not. You can ask the question, though. I'm like, already, oh, dear. So does Roshi. My teacher says, like you said, like you said, you've got to do it whether you feel like it or not. that the secret of practice is you do it every day. Do you think it's a good idea or not? You're just committing to do it every day. Most people do. Yeah, I think so. Some kind of sitting group, whether it's lay or residential like this. I mean, I was going to a weekly sitting group. I was going to Nishijima's group, and I used to go to Tim's things, which were... whenever they happened. Yeah, and it's a benefit. And there's something different about group sitting, which is difficult to quantify.

[48:09]

And one of the things I've never been able to do is a sesheen on my own. But... I know it's possible because I know a guy named Marcus in Helsinki who did it. So there's one guy who did it. A preponderance of evidence. Well, it may not be a preponderance of evidence, but it can be done. But that kind of thing is hard to do. And I actually tried it a couple of times. But it never went more than a day. Yeah. So it's... It's not a question of better or worse. You know, what I was... Getting at what I was talking about with Dogen is I feel like people are troubled by the fact that he waffles on this issue of lay practice.

[49:11]

And I kind of feel he's... He's just saying what needs to be said in the situation that he was in later in his life. You know, being the leader of a monastery, he had to say. He had to say this is the only way. Because, you know, how else is anybody going to deal with all that? Why do you say it depends on what you're trying to do? Well, why did I say that? Um... How to answer this question? Because there is an answer to the question. There are people in this world who manage to achieve a kind of very high level of what might be called spirituality or spiritual enlightenment or spiritual whatever. Um... There are people I've heard stories about. There's a guy in India that a lot of people are gaga about. I think he's dead now, but he was one of these people that in the 60s a lot of people were making pilgrimages to see him and stuff.

[50:19]

I forget the guy's name. And the thing was, he was so enlightened and everything was... He was so, so spiritually high and he could do all these things and he could read your mind and he could do all this stuff and give advice and whatever. But the other part of the story was that he sat there wrapped in a blanket all the time and people would have to feed him and people would have to do all kinds of things for him. He couldn't live... a normal life anymore. He'd become so spiritually high that the other parts of his life had fallen to pieces. He couldn't even make himself a sandwich anymore. That's the way I read it. You read these accounts and they're all written very glowingly and as if the fact that he couldn't make a sandwich anymore was a great achievement in his life. So some people are I think some people are looking for that kind of thing.

[51:23]

They're looking for, like, this massive spiritual, ah, you know, thing. And if you want that, you would want to go through some kind of really, it wouldn't necessarily be monastic training, because I think a monastery, especially a Zen monastery, would tend to discourage that level of stuff. But you'd have to go through a really, really, you know, rigorous, rigorous training, you know, all the time, you know, working, working hard. Um, whereas if you, if you were not looking, if you were looking for something more balanced, it might not be necessary to, um, to work that hard. Um, because you, you want to try to find something that's, this, this is the thing Nishijima would, would say when, when I, among other people, would, would say to him, well, why, why don't we, why don't we do longer sashins? Why don't we do... ongoing practice period and this kind of stuff. And he would say, this kind of practice removes you too much from daily life, would be his standard answer they heard numerous times.

[52:34]

He put the... He put the limit on his seshins to four days. I remember this. This was kind of a thing that was going on when I was part of his group, was that he'd do these three-day retreats. He didn't even use the word seshins. He'd call them zazenkai or just retreats in English. And some of his group were wanting something, you know, tougher or whatever. And they finally bullied him into adding an extra day. But he wouldn't go for anything longer than four days. Because he felt like you had to have a balance. And that's what he was trying to teach, was just trying to integrate it into your everyday stuff. That was his aim. Is that what you're trying to do? Trying. failing over and over. But it's all I know, and I feel like... You know, you feel this weird commitment when a teacher gives you something as ridiculous as Dharma transmission.

[53:52]

You feel a kind of a commitment to uphold what you've been given. And that's what I've been given. This crazy old man who worked for a soap company and shaved his head and wore robes. I shaved my head once and I looked like Nosferatu and it was bad. It was really bad. I have pictures. I can show you some of it. Yes. No, not Romano Maharshi. Did he look like that, too? That's who I was thinking of, yeah. Oh, did he? Okay, so maybe that was wrong. Maybe it was all fake. Oh, dear. Huh? Okay. Anyway, so the thing that I wanted to ask or speak to a little bit was the thing with, I guess it's even even to what you're talking

[55:01]

monastic versus lay practice is having a structure like, say, a shingi or something like that. Yeah, you have to be your own shingi. Essentially, you are. Yeah, that's true. It's definitely true. But I think that Zazeng can be our own, but then there's also, you know, this place wouldn't be available to people like yourself or like me or anyone else here to come here and practice if there wasn't some sort of... And we look for that anyway. Just as children thrive in some structure, given some direction, because without direction, we're nothing. Or without structure, we're nothing. So in that sense, I guess, what would you say to that? Yeah, I agree with that.

[56:04]

I mean, there's a very strong tradition in Zen of you need to have a teacher, which would be you need to have some kind of a structure. That's why the seven Buddhas before Buddha were invented to force even Shakyamuni to have a teacher, though historically he didn't have a teacher like that. So I think... I'm glad Tassajara is available. I'm glad all these monastic places are available. I'm glad even Eheji is there, although I'm not going to sign up. It's good that it's there, and it's good that the structure is available. I wonder about the viability of practice... in the larger sense, because I think it's really important.

[57:10]

I mean, this sounds overambitious, but something Nishijima kind of stuck in my brain that I have to agree with. I think it has to become a kind of a worldwide movement, you know, some kind of meditation. I really feel like that's the... the thing that, that could, uh, save us and push us as human beings into, into the, the direction that we, you know, we know we can go, you know, there's all, there's all kinds of things we are capable of that we're not doing because we just can't get our shit together, you know? And that's the way, you know, that's the way it, um, it seems to go. And, and I think some sort of meditation, uh, will help that. And I, and I, And I don't think the worldwide sort of meditation movement is going to be a monastic thing. I think the monastic component is part of it, but I don't see a lot of ordinary people signing up for monastic training.

[58:19]

You're not going to get... that sort of thing. So what people, you know, what I think we have to kind of push for is people to be able to do it as part of their ordinary routine, you know. That's a nice sentence. What you said, do you think that could be done now with technology? Things like video conferencing becoming more readily available? Oh. Yeah. Three other people going to breaks, talk, live. Yeah. I have mixed feelings about that. And certain people seem to get mad when I express my feelings on this, but maybe not people in this room. We'll see. I feel like what I see going on is, on the one hand... There is the idea of established teachers or people who are doing it already, connecting with their students through video conferencing and Skype and things like that.

[59:25]

So you've already met your teacher and you've already had some kind of interaction with her or him. And you move away and you keep connected with all this technology. And I have no problem with that. But the other thing I see going on is this sort of cyber dharma thing. where people are trying to do a fully, you know, electronic sort of sangha, which I just have real doubts about, because there's so much that doesn't get communicated unless you're right in somebody's face, you know? And it's all... I feel like the technology... has reached the level these days where it can fool us into thinking the person's in the same room, you know, especially you do like a Skype conference and stuff. You can kind of... I think you know intellectually that the person isn't in the room, but I think you're getting all these other signals that you're actually interacting with somebody.

[60:25]

And I just feel like it's easy to hide things. The story I always tell when this comes up, and maybe I've told it here before, is that one time I... I had requested to talk to Nishijima Roshi and I went up to his, he would have, he had a room, you know, it wasn't like a dokasan room or anything, it was just his room, his bedroom, you know, at this place in Dogen Sanga. And I went in there and I'm at the little table and I'm talking to him and I just looked over as I'm talking to him as he's saying his thing back to me and there's a teacup there and the teacup has this gross old dried teabag in it that's just been sitting there for like days. And I don't know how to express this clearly, but that was a big moment, you know. He lost, in one sense, at that moment, he lost a lot of his holiness for me, you know, which I had been projecting on him for ages.

[61:27]

It was sort of ruined by this crumpled up awful old teabag. But... But on the other hand, he became a human being, you know. And that a human being could do what he did meant I as a human being could do it too. And I feel like the Internet sort of, you know, as one example of the technology, allows for the superhumanness to... to extend infinitely, you know, because you can just, you can just hide. You've got this much of me, you know. You don't see that my zipper is down or whatever. My zipper isn't down, thank God. But, you know, you don't, you don't get the whole thing. I totally agree with them. I'm very, somewhat anti-technology, but in the sense that not everybody can be, you know, every Zen student in the world can't be a Tossahara. That's right. You could have full screen or full body. You could have, like, so much money. I could have the teacup right there.

[62:32]

Yeah, and I guess SFCC is doing that. Don't you have something like that going on? Oh, God. Are you going to bleep all this stuff out? Really? You got to fucking bleep that fucking stuff out? Okay. Oh, I did have one more hand up. Should I? Okay. about the person who's going to city center and they said that they went because it was going to happen anyway when i left tessahara last summer i actually have a really hard time meditating when i'm not here which is why it's really useful for me to come back and be part of this community and then there are a lot of things i carry out with me easily um but sitting without them i did not let them so i started sitting at the same time that they sit here on the east

[64:00]

That's right. Three hours later. That's good. Nice one. There used to be people that would do sashims with Nishijima. They did the same thing. But this is pre-internet. But I think we have absorbed our time. 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.

[64:44]

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