There's a gap in the people right there, where the pillar is. I have no idea, you know, if I can be heard, so, with all the wind. But it's okay back there? Okay. The acoustics here are quite good. But the sounds, I feel like I'm giving a talk on a ship. If the barn starts to rock, I'll ... No, it's true. All of you who helped with the ceremony, even by being there yesterday, helped. Thank you very much. It was the first time we've done a ceremony so completely in English, I think, and it seemed to go all right.

[01:04]

I've been talking about, the last two or three times, almost about some system of Buddhism, some way to practice as if the world were more than you could understand. by our usual way of understanding. But there's some danger in becoming dependent on or expecting something or relying on some system, as if there's some conclusion to our practice or some something to know about our practice. Tetsu Gikai, I think Gikai is right, Tetsu Gikai was Ejo, Dogen's, you know, there's Dogen and Dogen's disciple is Ejo and Ejo's disciple is Tetsu Gikai.

[02:45]

I think, actually, Eijo was older than Dogen. He was a very warm, kind person, and Dogen made him his direct disciple. And so Tetsu Gikai, who was a very learned person, would ask, Ejo, what he'd learned, as if he thought there was some secret, like the guy with the meat chopper I talked about yesterday, said, you tell me what the secret of Buddhism is. So he asked Ejo many times. Ejo never said anything, or he just said, we've both learned the same thing. But Dogen used to criticize Tetsu-san for, he said, you don't have an old woman's love. You don't have an old woman's heart.

[04:23]

Anyway, after Dogen passed away, Tetsu Gikai became Eijo's disciple and then eventually became the third patriarch in Japan. after Dogen, from Dogen. What Dogen meant by the warm heart of an old woman is Kanzeon Bosatsu, Avalokiteshvara. We usually, Kanzeon as in Avalokiteshvara, the Sanskrit name, you know, as we chant it in our sutra, has some different feeling than Kanzeon because in China and Japan Avalokiteshvara is no longer

[05:57]

male but female, actually he's not male or female, but he becomes softer and softer and the representations of him are very soft and flowing. Anyway, it becomes almost a Virgin Mary in China, the feeling of Kanzeon. And in Japan there are shingon Buddhism, tantric shingon Buddhism, has many temples which have remarkable, wonderful figures of kanzeon. And there's a tradition of pilgrimage in Japan and you get a ... you know where all, say, twenty-five kanzeons are and then you wear some kind of clothes, kind of canvas clothes, and if you're old and a lady, usually, you make a pilgrimage one place to the next. And they often, each place they get stamped. They either carry something which is stamped with the seal of the temple or they get their actual thing they're wearing stamped. So you see these old ladies who can barely move.

[07:26]

Some of them are so bent from working in the fields that they go up hills. If they go up a hill bent, they fall on their face, you know? So they have to lean way back. And then they do the same thing when they offer incense. They don't like to come up offering incense and their head hits the incense. They're very tiny. So they carry the insects like this, trying to look like they're straight. Anyway, there's quite a wonderful feeling from them, hiking all these miles between these temples. It may take them quite a long time to do it, several weeks. I don't actually know where they stay along the way. I'm sure they don't camp out. They go along. But Kanzeon is the Buddha of the Bodhisattva of the Lotus Sutra, and while some Buddhist sects read the sutra and recite the sutra to be saved by Kanzeon,

[08:50]

Zen, the Zen way of reading the sutra is Kanzeon is a good example of a Zen student. And it's another way of expressing what we say, when you eat, you eat, you know, without some two ideas. If you're eating, you're just eating. If you're sleeping, you're just sleeping. Or even, if you're sleepy, you sleep. If you're sleepy, you sleep, that's all. That kind of practice, saying that means kanzeon bosatsu. Because kanzeon takes any form that's necessary to save someone. Kanzeon is the bodhisattva who does anything possible to save people. So if it's a thief, he appears as a thief. If he's saving a woman, he appears as a woman. A man, a man. Another way of saying is, how Dogen expressed it is, 80% is good enough. Whenever you do something, 80% is enough.

[10:16]

To try to do 100% you'll be exhausted. But it also means, as I've been talking about, upaya, or acceptance of the world as something that 100% is impossible in. So Kanzeon has 84,000 activities. So to have an old woman's heart means you should be able to sometimes be an old woman. sometimes any kind of person. It's not necessary to have some system of Buddhism. If you, to try to

[11:42]

bring things to some conclusion or say, or to understand, you know, Hungan Dojo saying, just this one is. If you understand meaning, this is it, this is reality. Some sense of the, ah, this is, this must really be it. I feel some absolute thusness. That's some lazy experience. If you're really practicing Zen, you won't be satisfied with Zen, you won't be satisfied with your teacher, and you won't be satisfied with the teaching. But 80% is enough. The Diamond Sutra says, if you don't dwell on anything, essence of mind is there. If you have some idea, I'm enlightened, or I'm such and such.

[13:25]

You're dwelling on yourself. As Dogen, as Buddha, as Suzuki Roshi describes Dogen's famous statement, Suzuki Roshi just says, to study Buddhism is to study yourself. To study yourself is to forget yourself. To forget yourself is to know yourself. And to know yourself is to be proved by others, is how Suzuki Roshi sometimes described that statement. To know yourself is to forget yourself, not some label, I am enlightened.

[14:26]

I'm philosopher Socrates, I'm such and such.' But to forget yourself and to be proved by others. So waiting, we've been talking about waiting. Waiting means that same attitude of whatever it is, you know, whatever people want me to be. because Tetsugikai didn't know. No sutra says you should have an old woman's heart. And he didn't know what Dogen meant, but he had no choice but to wait. You can't go out and try to locate an old woman's heart.

[15:51]

So 80% means also our practice of zazen when you have, we do, as we do zazen, you know, no matter how still you sit, how well you sit, or how calm your mind is, still some images will come sometimes. And sometimes they won't be pleasant and sometimes they will be rather pleasant. But whatever they are, we don't interfere just as they come and go, like images on a mirror, except the background, in this case, the mirror itself is changing. And a very good teacher has a huge mirror maybe not so many Zen teachers are that good, but a very good teacher has a huge mirror in which 84,000 activities are reflected. There's a story about, quite a well-known story, I think,

[17:31]

Zen master who was a cook in a temple, in a monastery, and the abbot was also, of course, a Roshi. And there were a number of students there, and the students were quite jealous of the good relationship the cook had with the abbot. They were very close friends and didn't seem to put any restrictions between each other in their relationship. And the cook got lots of opportunity to spend a lot of time with the abbot. So they were rather jealous and they took the head of a snake and they put it in the miso soup that was prepared for the abbot. It was quite old. So when he ate his soup, you must know this story, but anyway, when he ate his soup he came upon something funny, you know, didn't know quite what it was in the soup, so he called the cook

[19:04]

And the cook was quite upset, you know, when he saw it. And he said, oh, show it to me. So he showed it to him and he ate it immediately. And of course, then the abbot couldn't say anything. That kind of attitude is of letting yourself be proved by others. You don't have any criticism for the monks who put the snake head in the soup and you don't explain to the abbot, you know, you just swallow it. Eat the snake head. There's probably 83,000 to go. And so if you just have an old woman's heart, which isn't so critical and isn't so worried in what kind of state the world is, and just feels quite affectionate toward you, whether you're a good grandson or not, or whatever, because she's not going to be here much longer,

[20:40]

So she's not so worried about the world. I don't mean you always have to be like an old woman, but you should also be able to be an old woman like that. You don't need to have some special understanding or system of Buddhism. I think Joshin-san is a wonderful example of this kind of heart. She would eat a bucket full of snake heads if it was necessary. She doesn't understand what I'm saying, but anyway, she's smiling. She's been taking care of us in that way for three months now, and Antaigi is pretty upset that she's been gone away, been away so long. And I start talking about Japanese people and I start using Japanese syntax in English. Forgive me. Anyway, because she's a very unique Japanese person, as you know. She walks like a young boy and has an old lady's heart and she doesn't

[22:08]

isn't so good at most of the things that Japanese people are good at, you know, but she's very good at what she has to do. For example, sewing raksus and okesus. She seems to be able to make okesus and raksus overnight as if she had ... Who are all those people who came in and helped the shoemaker at night? You know, in that story? You'd come the next day and all the shoes would be done. You leave her, she teaches sewing all day and then you leave her about ten o'clock at night and the next morning there's several raksus that are finished. You know exactly who came and helped her. Anyway, she is like that. And she's also like that at Hantaiji, which often has sesshins of sixty or more people. She cooks all the meals for the entire Sashin, all by herself, without help. And she has to even cut the wood sometimes. And she cooks in a small dirt thing with tiny little holes, like that. Then she puts little sticks of wood in, and she controls the fire and all the burners by pulling the stick out a little, or putting it in, or adding half a stick.

[23:31]

And so she has all this food going and she eats very quick, just like she sews. And serves all the meals, sets it all up, it's amazing. So naturally, and Taiji is complaining. They want her to come back immediately. So next year, she says, they won't let me come for more than a month and a half. So I was crying because I want her to come longer than that. But anyway, they've been putting quite a lot of pressure on her to go back much sooner, and she stayed another week because she wanted to see the eight of you who were ordained. receive your ocasis that she taught you how to make. And so she stayed another week and goes away tomorrow morning, tomorrow afternoon. And she's, let's see, we've been wondering what we can do for her. And we found out she's

[24:59]

hooked on cashew nuts. So we thought, Japan doesn't have so many nuts and things like that, you know, so we thought we could get her some of those, but she's already got about 80 pounds in her suitcase. We had to unpack her when she came because She arrived with suitcases everywhere. And we said, do you really need that many clothes? Well, every suitcase was full of presents except one. So we said, we can't take so many. She wasn't going to take her clothes. But we made her leave the presents behind. We convinced her we don't give presents the way they do in Japan. So she didn't bring so many, but she's trying to bring back a cashew nut, I think, for every person in Japan. But she's bringing back various things, so I don't think there's anything we can get her, but there's going to be a party for her tonight in the city. At what time? Does anybody know? At 6.30. There's one of our new nuns over there.

[26:21]

I know, but you look wonderful sitting in your okasana. Anyway, 6.30. Anyway, what she really enjoys most of all would be a lot of you to come to the party and as many of you could even, to come to the airport tomorrow. Most of you can't come, of course, but if any of you can easily come, this kind of send-off would be what she'd like. I think I told you, didn't I? I told somebody about the way she said goodbye at Tassajara. You'd leave Tassajara and you were supposed to leave at seven or eight o'clock. and seven o'clock, whatever time it was, she was nowhere to be seen until at 10 o'clock you drove through the gate. And she was waiting at the gate. She'd go up to the gate about the time you were supposed to leave and wait. And then when you went through the gate, she'd open the gate for you and bow and wave and run along beside the car. And finally, when you went around out of sight, you'd turn around, she'd be way back, still waiting. Anyway, we can do that for her at the airport.

[27:48]

Okay, Joseph-san? Okay. Are there some questions we could talk about? You know that most of you know, I guess, there's... Margot Doss did a walk in the Chronicle. I guess it's published in Sunday Punch today. And it describes a walk up over the hills and down through the valley. And a rather silly story I told her as a joke, more or less, which she starts the article with. Have you all read the article? few of you? I told her the story about, that actually Graham Petchy told me and it was a kind of, I told her about the vegetable leaf and the looking, I think I've told you, it's really not a Zen story or anything, it's just a silly story but anyway, it was a part of our

[29:13]

Zen mystique at that time, because we knew that Suzuki Roshi's father used to send Suzuki Roshi down to collect old vegetables that had been thrown in the stream. And so we tried to collect old vegetables here and there in the same fashion. And the story is of just about two hikers, two Zen monks who were hiking out in their kind of journey monks are supposed to take in the old days. And they've been hiking for some time and they haven't found a place to stay and then they see a light coming from a Zen temple up on the side of a mountain. So they start up to it. to stay there and then as they're walking up to the temple by the stream a vegetable leaf comes floating down. And so one monk says, one of the monks said to the other monk, well we can't stay at the temple of a man who wastes a vegetable. So I guess if the weather was better

[30:33]

There'd be a lot of people here expecting you to be chasing vegetable leaves or something, but this is how we get a bad reputation, you know. Anyway, I don't know, it looks like in this storm not so many people will come. There may be some people reading the walk and coming today. When does Joshin-san's plane leave tomorrow? A Japan Airlines flight that leaves at 12 noon. Flight number one.

[31:38]

Thank you very much.

[31:54]

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