I like wine an awful lot, that might be a better way of putting it, so we're very grateful to have you here today. Thanks so much, I'm exceedingly happy to have been invited by Roshi and by Rev to be here. My ties and contacts with Zen activities have been since my teen years, and I remember I was a frequent attendant at the Zen Center in New York for a long period of time, and as well have been a teacher of Asian Studies. So, like most teachers, I'm myself a constant student. Now what I would propose to do at the start of things today is a very unorthodox approach

[01:05]

to the subject of masculinity, femininity, roles, and things of that sort. Perhaps because I was exposed to too much mathematics, too much logical philosophy, I find that discussions on subjects of this sort are usually, like discussions on most subjects, rather idiotic, in which terms are used that have a personal, highly charged meaning on a felt level to people, and very strong opinions are expressed both for or against given points of views or theories, and a great deal of heat and passion are generated.

[02:17]

Then when it's all over, if you're like me, you sometimes find yourself sitting back and saying, what was it all about? What was said? Or sometimes, if you really get involved in the hassle and the fight, you kind of feel, what a bunch of ignorant bastards. They didn't see things as I did. In other words, they didn't see things very clearly. And such a bunch of dopes, they just couldn't seem to get the point. Or I knocked them dead, or whatever the case may be. And so the subjects are often discussed in terms of not only prejudices, but deep-rooted emotional investments of one sort or another. And rather like what the Buddha said about involvement governs such a discussion, there

[03:30]

is too much at stake. There is too much involvement for anything to be heard, for any response to take place, for a speaker to learn, for a hearer to learn, or any sort of a dynamic thing to occur. So what I'd like to do is to give you an idea of some of my own prejudices, perspectives on the whole shoot-and-match that is a word I don't like at all, reality. And I'd like to talk about how things do and don't make sense. And from a little bit of talk about that, related to the concept of masculinity, femininity,

[04:34]

opposition, unification, the self that transcends polarities of life, but in a way in which these aren't just glib terms that one would say, hey, that term feels good, it's a right-on term, and go, man, go, or something like that. Now, as a point of departure, I would like us to consider what Heisenberg called the principle of indeterminacy, and which can be illustrated in a very simple statement, such as we know less than we claim we either do or can. Just as I look down and say, wee, hey, if I knew I were going to have my shoes off and

[05:43]

be in my stocking feet, I wouldn't have such neat holes showing, but I'm not that smart. And I really don't think that hundreds of hours or even thousands of hours of training on how to put on socks and look at them before you put them on would make a difference. It would wind up about the same. Heisenberg, in his principle of indeterminacy, essentially says that the viewer is always part of his visual field. The viewer is always part of his visual field. There is no perception, no activity, no measurement in which we do not observe ourselves as part

[06:55]

of the field that we observe. We don't observe the field. Rather, there is a transaction that occurs in which we are part of the visual field itself. The rods, the combs of our eyes, the taste buds of our mouth, the hammers and anvils of the chambers of the ear and so on, the preconditions of nature and nurture, all of these form a grid, a configuration, such that whatever we perceive, that configuration, or to use the nice German word, that gestalt, that configuration, and I'm not using the word as the gestalt psychologists

[08:01]

of today would use it, but as it's been used in philosophy and in German psychology through the 30s. In other words, all that we experience of life are configurations. Now, Heisenberg, in this principle of indeterminacy, suggests that we are not viewers outside of the world. We do not stand outside of the world and regard the world as an object. Although there is a school of philosophers, the phenomenologists, for example, who would say otherwise, but for the most part, physicists or logicians would both agree that it is inconceivable

[09:16]

that we can stand outside the world, not only because it's physically impossible, but because it is even logically impossible. The world includes everything. That includes us. We are part of the world. Part of the world cannot be outside of the world. Rather like Francis Thompson's Hound of Heaven, if you know the wonderful 19th century spiritual poem in which Thompson attempts to run away from the mystical presence of the divine, but the hounds of heaven keep running after him, every time and every occasion in which we try to separate ourselves from the world, we are like the poet being chased by the hounds

[10:27]

of heaven, because the world, the universe, is there in us. We are part of it. And so it not only is a physical impossibility that, for example, someday a spaceship might travel so far out that it will look back at the world, but it's also a logical impossibility because the spaceship and any area in which it traveled would be part of the world. And so it cannot be its own subject and object simultaneously. As a result then, every perspective, every fact, every feeling, every observation, every

[11:28]

awareness, every dream symbol, every bodily feeling, every everything is part of the world and nothing is beyond. Because anything, by virtue of being a thing, is part of the world, part of this shooting match. And so we have no God's eye point of view. We have a bird's eye point of view only. This is one of the initial assumptions with which I would like to approach our subject or indeed any subject that we ever talk about, because this approach makes the smartest of

[12:35]

us less smart than we claim to be and the dumbest a lot brighter. So I think it's an interesting and very important starting point. Now, Heisenberg very self-consciously went back to the great German philosopher Kant of the 18th century, whose critique of pure reason is to me the most significant work of modern philosophy. Anyway, Kant in the 18th century analyzed the major fields of philosophy, metaphysics, ethics, all the rest of them, and noted that all of them are rooted in given assumptions,

[13:46]

starting points, the given, like in Euclidean geometry. No field of inquiry, whether factually or speculatively in its orientation, whether physics, biology, chemistry, or ethics or metaphysics, whatever the nature of the field, every field has axiomatic presuppositions that are the starting point of what defines the scope of the field and what is the nature and meaning of truth and falsity and meaning itself within it. And these are arbitrary. And Kant insisted, with one exception that I won't go into, it would be fascinating

[14:47]

too if we were talking about metaphysics, Kant violated some of his own logic. But Kant indicated that there are no factual universal truths that are the starting points of any fields of knowledge. We begin with givens. Or as people are more wont to say now, we begin with conventions. We set rules. Or as Wittgenstein said, we play language games and each language game has its own rules. You don't play poker when you're playing dominoes. And you don't switch the language of the two. It's inappropriate.

[15:48]

It's inappropriate because it doesn't accord with the ground rules. That's about where it rests. So if you choose to play poker, then two kings and three queens is a mighty strong hand. But it would have no relevance to dominoes. And each of these have rules that we agree upon by convention. Why? Because we want to make sense of things. That's why. And these rules are rooted in convenience, are rooted in language. And the facility of communicating in ways that are shareable than in any ultimate principles of the universe or beyond

[16:51]

or anything that is outside the range of normal human experience. So, for example, one of the starting points of mathematics is that a squared plus b squared equals c squared. If you are doing the measurement of an equilateral triangle, of an assessor's triangle rather, or in logic you have the law of non-contradiction that something cannot both be and not be the same thing at the same time. These are unprovable but useful starting points. But without them you cannot speak in that language. Otherwise, you should think games.

[17:53]

Now, I am not making any comments or appraisals in what I have said about whether or not there are other non-discursive, non-linguistic, in a sense, non-rational ways of going beyond the limits of language and description. So I'm making no comments about gods and goddesses or anything that's spooky or anything of the sort. But I am saying if there's plausibility to any of these things, the plausibility is not of the same order as that which makes common sense in language and discourse. It's another range of functioning and activity.

[18:59]

So, this is the starting point, perspective on the subject that I would recommend. I wonder if anyone has any thought or comment to share about it before we proceed. I'm just wondering what the principle is. Why indeterminacy? Well, what he means in indeterminacy is that events cannot be predicted totally. The principle came out of an observation in the first atomic reactors in which in 1924, 23 and 24, Heisenberg made photographic studies of the course of charged particles, the first time that this was done.

[20:00]

And he very elaborately, combining mathematics and physics, proved that you cannot predict the course or the trajectory of the charged particle when it was emitted from the electrode. So, it refers to a very specific set of experiments in a physics laboratory, because he was primarily a physicist. And needless to say, this made him an exceedingly unpopular person, since scientists are the sacred cows of the 20th century, until fairly recently when, for many a reason, they tended to lose credibility. But the whole guiding perspective of the 19th and 20th century, from beginning to end, up until fairly recently, was that all events are predictable.

[21:09]

All events are utterly subject to known or knowable laws that are totally knowable, if not totally known. In political forms, Marxism, Fascism, any of the authoritarian forms of politics usually are accompanied by a belief that total knowledge is available and they've got it. To me, it's a rather ironic thing that we and the Soviet Union both have political leaders who feel that the powers of reality are absolutely on their side. The Soviet Marxists believe that the iron laws of history, as they are called, will cause the contradictions in capitalism to split capitalism asunder and inevitably, note the metaphysical, very religious word, inevitably, and inevitably there will be the triumph of the proletariat.

[22:37]

Well, I would say that as an Anglo-Catholic, my religious faith is not as strong as all that, or as an Anglo-Catholic Buddhist. At any rate, the whole point of departure is that everything is knowable, and especially some people do actually know it all, and they know it all not only for themselves, but for you, me, and everybody else. So that starting point was the dominant theme of political thought, social thought, aesthetic theory, music, social studies, religion, all the rest of the 19th and most of the 20th century, that we can have full and complete knowledge. And with that full and complete knowledge, full and complete certainty, I myself would rather see less self-certain and self-righteous people be always within 50 feet of a button that can destroy 2 billion people.

[23:59]

But when you have either the historical force of the universe, or the God in Christ who caused you to be born again as the authority for your behavior, then you are and must be utterly and absolutely in the right. And so the stance of being within the world, limited by it, conditioned by it, is a point of departure that is alien to authoritarians. But it's a very common point of view. Many people who espouse supposedly liberal, progressive, whatever-you-will perspectives have the same conception of their certainty.

[25:06]

By the way, this goes back, too, to an old concept called original sin, that man is born into frailty. It goes back to early Christianity. It has many, many other counterparts. So the starting point here is this. And what Heisenberg himself did, more in response to your question, was to see the implications for all of knowledge and experience of what he found in the laboratory. Where, lo and behold, science is not a sacred cow. And science itself begins with givens, and is demarcated by limits, and each particular science has its limits. When you want to know how to make German chocolate cake, you don't call on the plumber or atomic engineer. I think Julia Child would be a lot handier.

[26:14]

But likewise, when the laser device at Livermore went off its footing, and maybe the people who put it there in the first place were off their rocker, I don't know, but at any rate, when it went off its footing, I'd sooner have engineers than Julia Child and a kitchen aide repairing it. So everything has its own scope, its own limitation, its own usefulness. And as handy as it is to eat with a knife and fork or a pair of chopsticks, I don't think that you'd like to play billiards with any of them. Any other thoughts or comments on this basic point of the pointer? Heisenberg? Heisenberg was a mystic, but like many mystics, he very wisely didn't say, the ultimate is indescribable, and now let me tell you all about it.

[27:32]

It's just one of the great problems with pseudo-mystics. They really aren't. Because there is no mystery, if they can tell you all about it. It's precisely when they can't that I at least feel like getting closer to a person. Is there any place in this view, with the bird's eye view, of those states that you have when you are beyond that, when you do have what is called a more transcendent view, and it's all-encompassing, and you're not just subjectively involved? Like a rapture, a feeling of rapture, a feeling of dissolving language and all the rest. Yeah, it's more sensing of things rather than trying to logically identify them. The Upanishads speak of nama-rupa as the most useful of all phenomena, nama-rupa, and also the most limiting as well.

[29:01]

Does anyone know what nama-rupa is? Named form. Named form. In fact, in Sanskrit, named nama, nama. The giving of name and form to things is an absolute necessity, and in the Upanishads, as well as in Buddhist logic, you find such an appropriate, I would say, appropriate ambivalence about the entire concept of nama-rupa. What nama-rupa says is that we ourselves do what the traditional mythologies have said the gods do.

[30:09]

Sort of like there was Yahweh, and all the beasts went by and by, and he said, Oh, well, let's call that one a heffalump or an elephant, and let's call that one a zebra, and let's call that one a penguin, and all the rest. By the magic of word, word magic, God spoke and it was done. The mystical, mysterious power of language that gods or God gave name and form to everything, and thereby not only created them, but gave them place, meaning, and distinguishing feature. Well, the principle of nama-rupa says that we do that. And incidentally, it was a concept that the German philosopher Nietzsche went bug-eyed when his closest friend and one of the first German Indologists, Roder, who wrote a two-volume work on Hindu thought, presented to him.

[31:25]

He was just bug-eyed over it, because it fit so well with what he was saying, that the job of the human life is to do what mythology has ascribed to the gods, to create, to take the chaotic and give it meaning, give it form, give it beauty. And so we would do what traditionally has been ascribed to powers beyond us. So the giving of name and form places us very much into the subject-object relationship of the viewer and the visual field. Without name and form, that process doesn't take place. So the transcendence of name and form is a strange phenomenon.

[32:33]

It requires name and form to reach the point where you can transcend name and form. You have to have language in order to shut up. And at the same time, in shutting up, you're in a different game. You're in a different game altogether. Now, does that game give you, let's say it gives you, for want of a better phrase, mystic intuition, does it give you mystic intuition of the reality, or does it release you merely from slavery to name and form? Now, the Hindus and some of the Buddhists have said that when you go beyond nama-rupa, you enter into direct encounter with the gods and the divine reality itself.

[33:49]

In Zen, going beyond nama-rupa is being right where you were without all the distraction. And it doesn't speak about an out-there as opposed to an in-here. And the I-thou subject-object is utterly split. Whereas in a way, in traditional religious points of view, it's enhanced. When, for example, good old Moses took off his shoes, as we did, because he saw the burning bush and said, the ground on which I am now standing is holy. He encountered a very specific, ultimate personal reality beyond himself.

[34:57]

So you see, going beyond nama-rupa can take many forms. It can be anthropomorphic, as with old Moses. It could take the form of being here in a state in which you have unlearned what has been necessary for you to learn, or any other number of variants in between. So I'm not answering your question directly. I would suggest that I personally very much believe that there is a mystical vision. But is that mystical vision the nirvana that is right here with me in this samsara? Or is it something on the outside about which I have many intellectual qualms?

[36:06]

I kind of shift from one foot to the next. And one of these days when I grow up, I might know the answer to it. That's one of the reasons why I don't go around with a dog collar and all that. But also why I haven't entirely dismissed the punk circumstance and hogwash as well. So I'm sort of on all bases in that game. I don't know if it relates to metabolism, but I'm had for breakfast. Cosmic uncertainty, economic-political uncertainty, cheerfulness about myself, the world, others on a given day, or just vroom, vroom, vroom about it all, or what. But I really can't give you even an answer for me, other than it's up for grabs.

[37:16]

And I'd rather not be quoted one time for what I've said in another one, this whole shoot and match, because I really don't know. And I really don't think it's that important to know. Who knows, I may grow up. Anyone else have a thought to share on this general overview? Now, this has implications that are very direct and immediate. That relate to words that we use very freely. Words like reality. Is there an objective reality outside of our sense organs?

[38:19]

Or Bishop Barclay's example of the tree falling. Everyone puts in, in Siberia, well that's not in Barclay's text, but you know, if a tree fell in Siberia, and there was no one around to hear it fall, did it make a sound? You know, so that's a profound question, when it's really bad grammar. If a tree fell in Siberia, and there was no one around, did its fall create sound waves? Would be proper grammar. Proper meaningful use of language. But that blows all the kit and caboodle of partisan metaphysical speculation and debate, and all the rest, and people say to guys like Mayor Rudolph, you're a party pooper. To me, the reason that there are so many ancient questions

[39:23]

that have never been satisfactorily answered, is that they're lousy questions. Questions that are not true questions, that don't make sense. It isn't that no one has yet come up with a good enough answer. So, at any rate, reality. And that tree. Then you hear people say, well, what's real for me, and what's real for you are two different things. But if it works for you, it's okay. If it works for me, it's okay. And then you wonder what they do when they come to an unmarked intersection. A wrench. But, at any rate, this is to say, of course, that there is no such thing. If you take seriously what Kant, Heisenberg, and more contemporary mathematicians and logicians talked about,

[40:27]

the word reality doesn't refer to anything. And if you look at the ways in which the word is used, it's used in such a variety of ways, in any given paragraph, by any given writer, that chances are it has six or seven different meanings within that one paragraph. So I prefer to talk about our experience, our descriptions of it, our language, things like that. And, since what we are talking about, masculinity, femininity, the masculine, feminine, and especially the feminine component, we're approaching a big issue in the field of thought known as ethics. Now, I'll say right from the start, I put a loaded definition of the term on the blackboard.

[41:34]

Ethics is various theories that prescribe the norms of conduct. There isn't one set of ethics. For example, there's Thomistic ethics, the ethics of St. Thomas, which would say that a screw-in's okay if it produces babies, and if you were married and fully wedlocked, so on and so forth. There are the ethics of Eudaimonism, that if you feel morally uplifted, however you define it, then it's good. Pileological ethics, that if it aims towards a larger good for society or for yourself, whether it's in a social or an individual form, it is good. What's called good, bad, right, wrong, all have different starting points, different theories, the plural. There isn't one such thing as ethics.

[42:40]

There are many divergent theories of ethics. And here, too, I just find myself so perplexed. I've taught this stuff for 20 years, I've written about it, and I feel more at home here than here, because all the starting points of various theories of ethics, like Utilitarianism, what is good is that which provides a greater well-being for the greatest number of people, as opposed to Egoistic Hedonism, that that which gives the individual a sense of well-being is the greatest good.

[43:42]

But choose between the two, and then add on 40 other theories and choose between 42. It would be mighty nice if there were only one. Then I wouldn't have any problems, but with 42 to choose from, I haven't made up my mind yet. So I'm kind of inclined towards some and not towards others. So I'm more interested, though, as a philosopher, in the analysis of the meaning of terms. How does a person use words like good, bad, right, wrong, moral, immoral, legal, illegal? And what are the distinctions in the way in which he uses them? Are they contradictory, or do they cohere? That's about as far as I can get. Does it make sense? In a very loose way, I have a very infantile belief

[44:47]

that whatever enhances freedom at nobody else's expense is fairly much okay. I would hope good, but it's fairly much okay. Beyond that, I can't go myself. So here, too, it's just like, you know, when I was accustomed as a kid to little cafeterias and all that, and then went into a great big one. What the heck do you do in a great big cafeteria? Too many choices. Can everything look so good? I had dinner on Friday night with a friend at a little French restaurant in Berkeley. We had their regular first-price dinner. We did all the desserts when we came by,

[45:50]

and narrowed them down to about three. Well, after the main course and the salad were taken away, out she came with some diced-up yucca. Things, at least for me, are just too broad. And I get too bug-eyed, being very childish and self-indulgent, to be able to make a choice. So there, too, it'll wait, at least as far as I'm concerned, until I grow up. So I have some kind of ethical commitments that I hold to rather vigorously. But I'm more interested in this, under the assumption that if we clear up at least how people talk, we'll get along better. It makes sense when we talk. Now, these are the basic perspectives

[46:51]

from which I would propose to deal with the subject of the role of the feminine, or the feminine component, in the spiritual life. Now, it's interesting, when you make listings like this, the masculine is on the left, man, woman, male, female, masculine, feminine. And the left is supposed to be the feminine. And the right is supposed to be the masculine. Which itself is a paradox that shows a point

[47:59]

which I will draw to greater attention in just a moment. We all know, of course, the Lie Chi and the Yin Yang. And yet, you know, it's rather interesting, and just to check on my own memory of it, I looked at what is the most commonly reproduced Lie Chi-Yin Yang diagram in English language publication, because of its size. A very large percentage of Lie Chis are photo offsets of this one in Dorothy Norman's heroic encounter.

[49:03]

And she calls it the Yin Yang. And note, here we have the light, and here we have the dark, and it is called the Yin Yang. Now, which would you think plausibly would be the Yin, and which the Yang? The woman as Yin. The masculine as Yang. Yeah. And which way are they depicted in the diagram? The woman's on the left here.

[50:03]

The feminine is on the left. In the diagram? Uh-huh. Which is the sun? Oh, you mean the spot in the middle? No. What is this? What is this half? The light half. Which is the light half? The feminine. The feminine. I'm going to say the feminine. How many say the masculine? This is part of the very basic, to me, more than passing, more than passing, contradiction. And even the way diagrams are made and words are listed, well, I guess in terms of names, Mr. Yang would be appropriate, and Ms. Yin would be appropriate ways of putting it,

[51:11]

so that Yin is the feminine, and Yang is the masculine. But the light, the sun, the more radiant body, the day, as opposed to the dark, the moon, the night, that which reflects the light of the other bodies, so this is the active, and this is the passive, make this the Yang, and this the Yin. So the Yin-Yang is really the Yang-Yin. Thank you. Just like if you looked in any work by Freud, Jung,

[52:23]

Erich Neumann, or any other number of people on dream symbolism, or in art history, between the right and the left. The right is always masculine, the left always feminine. In the creeds of Christendom, the representative of manhood, of masculinity, of divinity, Jesus Christ, sits at the right hand of the Father. In traditional Christian art, the Virgin Mary is at the left. And of course, if you can visualize a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady of Guadalupe

[53:25]

is the moon mother of antiquity on the crescent moon. She represents the night, and her color is blue. Blue in honor of the night, the Virgin. In honor of Isis. In honor of the depths of the water. Midnight blue. So, there is a gross ambiguity and confusion, even in our language and our description, as to what constitutes the male, or the female, or the masculine, or the feminine. And I'll be separating these two pretty soon. Because, in the diagram called Chinese yin and yang,

[54:34]

yang is where yin should be, and yin is where yang should be. And in our demarcation, man-woman, male-female, masculine-feminine, you may argue, well, the order of precedence is male chauvinist. Can you write it out? Uh-uh. Left, right. And the role of the feminine is where the masculine is placed. Wouldn't it be odd to say woman-man, female-male, feminine-masculine? We are so habituated by our language usage to think, and to speak, and to hear, and to see that way. So, I would suggest that there is an inherent ambiguity,

[55:42]

not so much in the definitions of these words, but in the way the words are used. The words are used very ambiguously. And if you are a person who at all is inclined to give credibility to unconsciousness and the activity of unconscious processes, it would be a more than passing moment to take strong note of how ambiguous even these basic terms are, not in their definition, first of all, but in their use. I'll talk about ambiguities of definition in a minute. But ambiguities of use, right off the bat,

[56:49]

the thing is kind of screwed up, isn't it? The yin-yang is the yang-yin. The male-female is the female-male. The male on the right, the female on the left. Those of you who have bedmates of the opposite sex, I wonder who's on the right and who's on the left. And then you can always say, well now, is it facing bed forward or bed out? But we won't get into the theory of perspective and the use of figures in art. But at any rate, and I'm not advising, by the way, that those of you who sleep on this side or in the other gender

[57:51]

should immediately switch to the other side of the bed because it may be that you have an overabundance either of yin or yang that may be corrected by sleeping on that side of the bed. So it may be very therapeutic. So I'm not suggesting that you jump from one side of the bed to the other because of this. It may be that the I Ching would say, ah, correction and balance, keep it just the way it is. And I would say especially if it's comfortable. Okay, are there any thoughts or comments before we proceed further? Do you think it's a matter of how we write?

[58:53]

Would it make a difference if we wrote women, men, or men, women? If we wrote like that, then no. And assuming that we still have the same person, it's a matter of the other, I think. Well, it's interesting, though, that in ancient Chinese temples, for example, it's usual that when there are protective deities of opposite genders on either side, that the male is on the right, the female is on the left. Just as there were well, this is in Elephanta in the south of Egypt, in Upper Egypt. You know, the ancient Hebrews were supposed to have no sculpture, no art. There was a Jewish temple

[59:56]

from the 6th, 7th century BC in which Zedek and Shalom are on either side of the entranceway and the male, Shalom, is on the right, and Zedek, the female, is on the left. Righteousness. Wisdom. So it's like the same thing that in artistic representation. This tends to be not an absolute norm, but a fairly common norm. But I think that this is really a very precious, more clear-cut example, if you will, of the ambiguity, the very basic inherent ambiguity in the way words are used.

[60:58]

And then sometimes you hear, oh, very macho athletes make comments in which they'll slip out cross-gender references to themselves, things of that sort. Very, very neat things when they happen. I rejoice immensely every time something like that occurs to myself. But at any rate, let's take these terms, male and female, masculine and feminine. Male and female tend to mean the, well, in human genetics at least, the male is the source of the Y chromosome,

[62:01]

and the female is only X chromosomes. The woman is the egg producer, the man the sperm producer. Biogenetically, going back to plants, it's those that give, those that receive scores, or what have you, for insemination. And this is probably a lot of what went into the Chinese yang and yin distinctions. Now, from today's point of view, I would call them sexist, chauvinist, all kinds of ististist terms, and I think it would be a correct application of them to a time when they were inapplicable because the concepts had no relevance in that era,

[63:03]

though they would today. But, active passive, the sense of rhythm in the universe, in the body, blood pressure has its systolic and diastolic, the year has its seasons, the rhythm, the basic rhythm, inhalation, exhalation. One of the Vedic hymns speaks of worlds coming and going in and out of creation as Rahman inhales, thereby destroying all the world and exhales and thereby creating all worlds. And each maha-yuga, each great age is an exhalation of Brahman.

[64:07]

So rhythm, rhythm, whether it's the heartbeat, man-made sounds like the tick-tock of a clock surround us, as do fields of force that tend to be polar, light and dark, active and passive, awake and asleep, and all the rest. And the Chinese at first, very arbitrarily, made a whole list of goodies that were strong and powerful and that were very solar and those were male. And those that were lunar were female, and of course men are

[65:11]

very strong, and of course gals are to look up to their heroes with passionate feelings of their bosoms and adoration of their hemad. And that's the nature of things, isn't it? Isn't that the way it is? Oh, it isn't. Well, see, that's the problem with the Liezhi. It makes a point, and it makes a good point, but it drives it to the ground. And without going into it in much detail, the Book of Changes, the I Ching, modifies it with all sorts of gradations and interfusions of yin and yang and interprets these as always in motion in any given individual

[66:12]

and having a balance in all things so that all beings, all creatures, male, female, or whatever, themselves are composites of yin and yang forces so that within yang is this dendu, this dot of yin. Within yang is this component of yang. Just as the male body produces female hormones, the female body produces male hormones, and going back to the biological origins of life as just sexual before it was male or female, there are vestiges of male and female organism,

[67:13]

organ development in men and women that are cross-gendered, whether it be the clitoris, breast, so on. So there is even biologically, even in anatomical detail, the presence of the female component within the male, the male component within the female. I don't know if there's a gal present who doesn't produce testosterone. You'd be in trouble if you didn't. So in our bodies, in nature itself, there seems to be, so they went on from this rather

[68:17]

high-bound, narrow, original conception to a refined awareness of it, which says that things are in flux, things are dynamic, and these are moving. This is moving into here and into here. And there are seasons of life experience when one predominates over the other. I don't think, I don't know how many years it's been since I wrote a poem at home. And by home, not only meaning my house, but the United States.

[69:19]

I think that I'm in very, very close touch with my feminine component, sometimes a little bit too much so, sometimes getting into trouble, but that's fun too. But there is one aspect of it. I can't write a successful poem at this stage in my life in the good old U.S.A. And I just wrote a couple of poems last month, as you can see. And I kind of think it would be something I'd feel allowed to do. I could put together some verse that isn't too worse, and I wouldn't have to yell on the nurse or be very terse and still do it in the States.

[70:26]

But there's a bit of a feminine component that I can't quite express on familiar terrain, if that is a feminine component, which we'll get to in a moment, because poetry is supposed to be very feminine. Most people who write poetry are men. But, at any rate, male and female are not masculine and feminine. Male and female are biological terms. Masculine and feminine are social, societal, or, if you like, sociological designations. They're culture-bound terms. E. Franklin Fraser,

[71:29]

one of my social professors, put it very nicely without saying very much in saying it, but he said that what is masculine is what a society or a culture... No, he used the word culture. He was a sociologist. I'm not. He wouldn't have said society. Masculine is the manner in which a culture or a subculture expects males to behave. Feminine is the way in which a culture or a subculture expects women to behave. And that was the simplest definition that I've ever heard, and I can't say that I've come across a better one. Does anyone have a suggestion for a better one?

[72:34]

In other words, the one is biology. The other is culture or subcultural norm. That takes us to ethics, to particular value systems of cultural and subcultural groups. Now, we think of fancy dresses being feminine, dark dresses being masculine. Well, look at Mother Nature. With birds, most of the pretty birds are the males, and most of the birds without the multicolored plumes and all are the females. With fish, it's divided evenly. Similarly, with sea mammals,

[73:42]

the females have the more notable decorations, if you will. And with plants, the females tend to be more multi-hued and what have you than the males. So in Mother Nature, there is no norm that would say that stark decor is male and multicolored or flamboyant decor is female. But different cultures may say that stark decor is masculine and multicolored or flamboyant is feminine. Now, take a walk down, well, to, I find myself on California Street occasionally

[74:46]

in the business district, and I notice the men there wearing suits of all kinds of colors and ties and a lot of times fancy hankies in their pocket and things of that sort. And these are supposed to be very male-male. And take a walk on Folsom around the gay bars or on Castro and Cambridge shirts and blousons are it and utter minimum amount of decor. And it may have been a cliche of years ago that screaming queens were all gussied up with all kinds of flamboyant clothes and jewels and all the rest like Oscar Wilde.

[75:50]

But that most surely would get you beaten up. You walk down on Castro Street and not by gay bashers but by leather gays. So what is male, what is female, what is masculine, what is feminine? The prescription for homosexual dress on Folsom and Castro is essentially very macho, as our culture defines macho. I won't forget how amusing it was when I lived in Sarasota, Florida and the leather gay magazine Huncho first came out. It was a big stack of it in a magazine shop and a guy was in the magazine store with his girlfriend

[76:54]

and saw Huncho, a magazine for macho males and he says to her, hey, that's for me. And he picked it up and leaped through it and was quite a bit taken aback and did quite a bit of humming and hawing with being for him to his girlfriend. So what is masculine, what is feminine is what is determined as appropriate by cultural groups and cultural subgroups. Of course that automatically means that at any given point within any given culture there can be endless different norms depending upon the subcultural norm. You're much more of a macho male in El Barrio

[78:03]

if you have a lowrider that goes bumpy, [...] bumpy that's a 48 convertible but the chrome just perfect, the paint just perfect and all the rest than if you had a 1980 Ferrari. That would be very unmacho, that would be very yuck. It would be a girl's car. On the other hand, if you worked for Sutro like Mr. Feinstein, the mayor's husband whatever his name is I don't think that a lowrider would be regarded as a very macho car but a Ferrari or a Maserati would.

[79:08]

So these things are defined as masculine, feminine in these cases not by the culture but by the subculture. The subculture of the business and brokerage community the subculture of the barrio and then let's say the subculture of the barrio ascendant would not be a lowrider the subculture of a stockbroker who has made so many bucks that he doesn't give a damn would be to do with one of our family friends who has a seat on the New York Stock Exchange goes to and from the exchange in his office on his motorcycle and he has a big heavy chain with a padlock for a belt and that's the way he conducts his billion dollar Wall Street brokerage firm.

[80:16]

So these are all defined and they have little to no relationship to male and female. There isn't directly a link between masculine and feminine and male and female because many times what is regarded as the one is the opposite of what is regarded as the same at another time. In the court of Louis XIV the time of Madame Pompadour the famous hairdo women's hair was piled sky high men paid great attention to their hair. In the 40s and 50s especially

[81:17]

women wore pageboys and simple hairstyles and men paid much more attention to their hair and nowadays men don't go to barbershops they go to hair stylists and many a guy would be afraid to tell his wife how much he spent at the hair stylist for fear of getting a bop on the bean. And so on the other hand in the 30s and early 40s all the crew cut, no attention to hair the other thing was very masculine considered very male thereby because of the confusion of masculinity and maleness. I guess my days would be the 30s and early 40s of not having too much of a barber to work on anyway. So at any rate

[82:23]

these terms are relative but relative in a very specific way. They are relative to the norms of a cultural or subcultural group. Many a person will say of things that are relative oh well they're relative so differences don't matter. You send a guy walking up Mission Street and 22nd with rouge on and dangling earrings and he won't walk very far. So the fact that something is relative is not to say that it doesn't matter. It's to say that it applies to groups

[83:25]

that are larger or smaller more dominant in the culture or more subordinate within the culture. They are relative to those groups wherein they are norms. There's nothing that looks freakish to one person that isn't the norm not only to the person whom the individual may think looks freakish you know it's that person but to those like him however few they may be. So when one says that these are relative it isn't to say that they don't count or that they are unimportant. They count so much that they literally can be matters of life and death. So masculinity and femininity

[84:32]

are terms that have no intrinsic no inherent fixed meaning. Their meanings are always their meanings within given context but that doesn't say that they don't count for much. I'm not saying whether they should or shouldn't count that's another matter. Should and shouldn't with 40 cents will get you a cup of coffee and a cheap greasy spoon. So shoulds and shouldn'ts have very little bearing on the matter but it's what is and what ain't. Okay. Is this a matter on which anyone would like to share some thoughts? Now what I'm going to get to in a while

[85:51]

is a bunch of different viewpoints about people and what we're all supposedly like according to people who know us better than we do or at least who think they do. But I think this is another very important ground rule level of perspective from which we can look at things that people have said with a bit of clarity good logic and common sense. So note here we are at something which is easy to define

[86:54]

that essentially is a biological description of the way a person happens to be built. Here we have what societies, cultures, subcultures moral and ethical, religious and other types of traditions have done with it and have said there are corresponding sets of behavior, appearance and activity that are masculine, that are fitting for males and that are feminine and are fitting for females. But what I would like to state

[87:59]

before we proceed further right off bat is how wise especially in the refined neoconfucianistic view that looked upon the VHG as active and interactive how far ahead they were of the wise guys of the 19th and early 20th century in the West who believed in laws of progress and succession like Hegel's and Marx's stages of the dialectic that the thesis stage of historical development or natural development as Engels expanded it would be followed by its opposite and in turn out of its opposite would come a new synthesis

[89:02]

which in turn would give rise to other contradictions opposites, opposites, opposites, antagonisms Now the ancient wisdom of China and the ancient wisdom of the Western occult tradition both saw things very differently very much closer to what today we would consider dynamic and humanistic perspectives For example the in the ancient Kabbalah the Hebrew occult tradition that developed in the early middle ages and in turn influenced many of the Islamic mystics

[90:05]

Christian mystics and the central image of which the Tree of Life with its ten centers is the guideline motif in the construction of Chartres Cathedral and if you found yourself at Chartres I could show you how the ten sephirotheme the ten reality centers of the Tree of Life are incorporated in the very construction of pillars windows and doorways of the Cathedral of Chartres but in the essentially middle ages clear through to the Western occult tradition of today there was what was originally

[91:06]

the neo-Platonistic much older view that ultimate reality is a nameless void a nameless void very much like the reality before and after Namarupa that we talked about Ainsa was actually three-fold but I won't go into it that the ultimate reality manifests itself in ten stages called the Tree of Life and for our purposes I will simplify it by by by leaving off

[92:06]

several of them a very nice way to simplify things let's see am I cheating the Tree of Life? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 8, 9 10 let's go huh okay, now these actually go here and these actually go here it's much more complicated than I'm drawing but the Tree of Life is saying

[92:45]

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