Ten thousand eight hundred dollars. I don't know if we can manage to do it, but maybe the person selling it to us wants to sell it to us. He has it up, holding it for someone else. And it just depends how fast he has to pay the other person, because he'd give it to us, but he has to pay the other person. I don't know if we could do it, but it may be the closest thing to an altar which has a female image rather than a male image that we could get. So, anyway, for that reason, because they're kind of hard to find a good one, it would be nice to get it and put it in the Buddha Hall in the city, probably. foot on the L was a chop, which was returned to a new position.

[01:16]

I guess that I heard it was expressed that I was disappointed in this practice period because of the children and families or something like that. And I don't know if that's... I think that's easy to misunderstand what I mean. I feel tremendous admiration for the families and single parents were able to do, to be here and practice with a child. I don't know if, for example, Virginia could do it, would be willing to do it. But still, it does change practice here. at least in the first part of this practice period, it looked... it changed it, to my feeling, more than the last practice period. And somehow we have to balance the importance of having tasara open to everyone and the opportunity for a kind of continuity here in practice that is so helpful.

[02:54]

The question of women in practice, I know, concerns all of you, some of you more than others, and Marsha Soh, who I don't think in her practice feels like a man or a woman, It makes me think a little bit of... Maybe I mentioned the Japanese teacher I had at college. Someone asked, what's it like to be Japanese? He said, geez, I've never been anything else. I don't know. And in practice, we don't make comparisons. That's the main realm of our practice. But still, there are some differences. There's some research being done recently, mostly by women, that seem to indicate, if their research is right, indicates definitely that the brains of men and women are rather different. Not so different in most primates. The brain is quite different between men and women,

[04:33]

And in humans and in primates or apes or monkeys, supposedly related to us, the brains are almost similar, almost exactly, but there's some difference in the pattern in which you inherit things from your father or mother is different, whether you're a daughter or a son. Even though we are different we make one being, together. But separately, too, we are one being. I think there may be some difference to I guess a few people have written books about this recently, that the difference in... Since the mother does most of the child-rearing, the difference in being a daughter or a son... A daughter finds it much harder to distinguish herself from her mother than a son, and a daughter tends to...

[06:00]

be more dependent on the mother and her identity more mixed up with the mother's. And she... it looks like, anyway, women tend to then transfer that dependence and identity hook-up to a man, or some need to do that. And that may be part of a... I mean, some women feel a need to find their identity through another person more than men seem to feel. Men also seem to make, at least if I take this community as an example over the last 15 years, if I take this community as an example, men seem to make more easily bonds with other and sometimes other women too, with women too, more easily than women make a variety of blondes. And while it looks to me, anyway, that women are on the whole more sensitive and attuned to situations than men,

[07:28]

They also seem to be more involved in, again, from what I see in the community, in pretty strong feelings sometimes, grudges or hate. I find more often two women hate each other, have some long grudge over years than the men do. And in any one time in the community, there's usually two or three women who hate me. Something pretty close to that. So I think there will be some difference, anyway, whether what I'm saying is exactly true or not, obviously there'll be some discussion about it, but there's... anywhere there's some difference. And it's close to one of those things, it's pretty hard to discuss, but we could discuss it some. And... it's hard to discuss partly because there...

[08:49]

gets so involved with the idea of biases. But I would say that for women to practice in the way that a traditional priest practices with others, it's necessary to be able to make more than one bond and to find your identity through numerous relationships. I think it wasn't until quite recently, maybe William James, that in Western philosophy there was real consideration that mind and body were so inseparable to be virtually one, though that's an old idea in the Orient. In the West, William James made a point of it.

[10:16]

And in fact, I may have told you, our main donor, certainly one of our main donors, Mr. Johnson, these things that happen, you know, usually have in themselves quite a lineage. And he's a businessman, not interested in religion, though his father was a... businessman who didn't want to be a businessman, who wanted to be involved with religion. His grandfather, I think I've told you this, was a physician who wanted to be a minister. And he was so convinced by his just being a doctor in New England town, that mind and body were the same, that he took on himself to go from town to town in East Coast at that time, and lecturing on mind and body are one, and we should treat disease with the idea that mind and body are one. He was probably, must have been a contemporary, or not too long after William James, must have

[11:39]

whether they knew... He'd read William James, I had no idea, but... Anyway, it's... That kind of... Obviously, Mr. Johnson, the present Mr. Johnson, was about 80, I guess. His thinking is very non-dualistic. And Bergson, a French philosopher, made a point that you can't tell in a chicken's egg. At what point does life begin? There's no point, you can say, this is the point. Someone was telling me about some old man who also, I believe, is 80 above. who his religion, he has a number of followers and I don't know how many, but he has a group and he's trying to increase the group, I was told. That's why I was asked about it, what I thought about it. But he stands in front of a window every evening about dusk and he talks to the world.

[13:18]

He stands with his arms upraised like this, at the window, and he talks to the world. Be good and all you guys, and he gives out good thoughts to the world. And he's convinced that if you are concentrated enough and you do this, everyone hears you. Many other teachers say, you know, if you sit in the mountain and there's some problem somewhere in the world and you concentrate on it, you'll help the problem. I don't know if it's so. Maybe it's so. I remember in Joy Field Bookstore once a year ago, there was some pamphlet or something in there that was available for... I think it was Sue Wood. Sue Wood... There was a certain hour with a time chart for the different time zones all over the world. And you could pick your hour, and it was set up so that at that hour everybody who read the pamphlet or was so good or wanted to join in would meditate on pure pink beans of love. So that the... Oh, it's stuck in my mind. It's pure pink. It's not like pink, but pink beans of love.

[14:34]

We were all at the right time, I guess, this throbbing pink thing, around the proper time zone. But it doesn't. Basically, in Buddhism, we don't pose such a thing, some ether or some special means. We don't have to pose some ether. There's already a medium, you know? I am in touch with you already, in a three-dimensional sense, by air, and floor, And there are many rhythms, you know. As I said, sand takes a million years to go a hundred feet, a hundred miles in a river. But genes supposedly take only a thousand years, a millennium, to go throughout human race.

[16:07]

So what is the difference in that, what's the difference between a hundred miles in a million years and every person around the globe in a thousand years? Are they both the same three-dimensional world? And when, as Karin, Katherine said, our voices overlap, occupy the same place, or right now we are all multiple cousins of each other, simultaneously occupying the same place, Bohr, Niels Bohr, who came up with quantum theory. He says maybe mind is a resonance phenomenon. There's a famous koan on this whole question. What is an event? The Chinese invaded Vietnam. I told you, didn't I, about

[17:38]

The missile crisis and the admiral going toward Cuba? No? This is another thing that fell into the realm of not talking about. Because the person who did this, didn't I tell you about this? The missile crisis? No? You're kidding. Anyway, somebody you know, I won't tell you. And suddenly he began telling a story that his wife had never heard. I really didn't tell you about that. She can't remember about that. Anyway, he was trained specially. See, the Russian ships in the missile crisis at that time, the Russian ships had their prowls reinforced with steel and concrete, so they could slice through other ships. I like it, you know, because here we have all these big missiles and everything, and then they get figured out, they're just going to ram ships. It's like kids, you know, playing with boats or something. You know, an amusement park.

[19:04]

I was reading Gordon Liddy, in the middle of the Watergate thing, to demonstrate to... He was a lawyer, you know, the lawyer for the Congressional Committee, the Committee for Re-Election, or whatever. To demonstrate to the people he was working for, he said, it's necessary to demonstrate your strength to the people you work for. Not intellectual strength, you know. and he held his hand in a candle until the flesh began to smoke, you know, venture. Even we don't do that. It's advanced practice here, I've heard about this. So some Zen people used to tie a rope to their foot and push themselves off Plagg Rock, or the equivalent. Not here. In Japan they do it. But we haven't done that either. Anyway, in this missile crisis, you know, it's like that. You get all these rockets, but you get these Russians with their ships reinforced. So, there was a group of people who were trained to take command of a ship. This person was on, I guess, a big aircraft carrier called Geronimo or something like that. I think Geronimo. It was the lead ship.

[20:34]

And they're going toward Cuba, and I guess there's a satellite, and the satellite's filming Cuba, you know. And they had, I believe, four minutes from the time, four minutes from the time the silos opened, started to open, until all of the stuff on the ships, the Americans would have to blast Cuba. So the Russian ships are coming from this direction, the American ships are coming from this direction, and they could see the coast of Cuba in the distance. And they had all these pictures being relayed to them somehow of the silos. And Kennedy was on some kind of intercom from Washington saying, some of you are going to lose your life and this is for America and you've got to get in there and hang in there and so forth. And this person, I'm talking about, had been specially trained to visualize the ship in his stomach. And when he felt the need to take command of the ship, he could turn to the admiral and say, I'm now in command. And the admiral would have to step off the bridge. And he would take the ship on a collision course into the Russian ship. His wife was astonished. She'd never heard he'd done this.

[22:03]

We get people down the valley at Grungelstern, make them feel very secure. And the... Russians backed down, as you know. So the ships turned away and so forth. But they were trained, this group of people, I guess there was one in every one of the ships, bigger ships. were trained to do this because they thought an ordinary person without special training would turn away at the last minute. They felt that these people were trained to visualize the ship in their heart, could maintain their concentration and go through. It's interesting that our government knew that much about the Hara, but not enough. They didn't carry it far enough. We might say the whole Cold War, I mean, a hot war is fought between soldiers, and a cold war requires everybody to hold it in their stomach. But this was pretty important. I know whoever the head of Russian is, or one of the heads, said recently,

[23:30]

that Russia would never back down again, referring to the Cuban Missile Crisis. And a lot of the build-up of weapons has to do, actually, not with shooting them off, but with the psychology of being able to back someone else down. So we can ask, what is an event? Xiefang said, oh. He asked. On South Mountain, South Mountain is behind this temple, it was, Flag Rock, Mount Shugang, there's a turtle-nosed snake. You all should have a look at it. And someone said, Ching said, Chongqing said,

[24:33]

someone is losing body and mind today. And Xuanzang, Gensha, he was asked, he was told about it. And he said, a brother, Qing, may be like that, but I am not like that. And the monk said to him, why are you not like that? He said, why make Xuanzang, He said, why make use of South Mountain? And then, Punggol, young man, he threw his staff down in front of Shufang Temple. and made a gesture front as if the staff was a snake. This mountain, you know, from here has one appearance, like marvelous appearance. From this peak up here,

[25:59]

a completely different month. When you, you know, cross-hatching is that kind of drawing where you draw some lines this way and draw some lines this way, used in painting, etching and painting sometimes, where you may delineate the folds of a road, say, by showing shadows So when you're doing that, making those lines, what is real? Is the row you're drawing real? Are the lines real, the scratches on the plate, or are the pencil, the graphite real? Or is your mood or thought real, or your intention to make

[27:02]

What is real? The marks or the picture or the feeling you have? Zen would, of course, emphasize more the feeling you have. And I think, from the point of view of practice, that's important to realize that, to the extent that you don't get caught by so many ideas about how to adjust the world. In no drama, Zayame, who is probably named

[28:09]

creator of Noh Theater is, I've learned a lot from. His school has lasted for a long time. One of the things, again, something you don't talk about, the head of the school, I've mentioned this to you before, It's rather like Zen, actually, this idea of Zen organization. The head of the... Nakamori Sensei was talking to me about this. The head of the Kansei Kaikan, Kansei school, is... When I came back from Japan, about the first thing he said to me was, we should study Kansai. And having just come from Japan, I was thinking, yes, I am. But he meant Dr. Kansai, who happened to be in Berkeley at the time, just arrived. So I did both.

[29:28]

Anyway, the head of the school is not so good, you know. But there are many people, his cousins and so forth, and other lineages within them, who are very good. No one ever says he's not good. Everyone supports him and allows him to be the head, but to everyone else, the school is actually carried by several people, not by him. But his son is supposedly quite good. And since they have a system of inheriting by blood or by adoption, the head, it doesn't pass necessarily to the most talented person. But also there is quite a tradition there from Buddhism to not make to not make the positions such a target, and it's allowed the Japanese emperor to have probably the oldest bloodline in the world, because the real power is held beside him.

[31:03]

So the Kansei school continues, and they don't... no one can point out or say, you're not good. They all just support him. He may know it, but he doesn't talk about it, and they can't announce it to the public. But if you're quite alert and go to the theatre regularly, it's something you know. Another thing is destroying the person who's trying but causing the problem. Recently at the bakery someone came to me quite upset because twice in a row they worked for somebody who hardly knew what they were doing and were difficult and irrational, and then the second person was extremely rigid. I had to agree in both cases. The bakery didn't want to let this person go. They'd been there a while and they needed some kind of physician. But they were very... But this person worked for them. How can this be Zen? How can they have authority? We need to have some ability to tolerate

[32:37]

differences, and not make mountains out of molehills, and not take things all out of perspective. Crazy! You know what it means? A fine network of cracks, and in pottery, to craze, it's a technical term, craze, which means a fine network in pottery. Or a crazy quilt is a patchwork. And to that extent we're all somewhat crazy in that when we don't perceive things unambivalently, when we perceive things as contradictory and mixed up, we can't quite make sense of it or our feelings are out of proportion to the situation. We need some space in this story of Shifang, the turtle-nosed snake. What is a turtle-nosed snake? Shifang, he was known for always saying, whatever you do, in all respects, cover heaven and earth. What is heaven and earth?

[34:09]

But that's what he said, in all respects, always cover heaven and earth. And also this koan talks about or has a commentary which states, mind revolves with myriad phenomena. Mind revolves with myriad... Mind continually revolves with myriad phenomena. but the turning point is extremely mysterious. Mind continually revolves with myriad phenomena, but the turning point is extremely mysterious. And that is also a secret. may know from somebody who writes books or poems or paintings, they're very reluctant to talk about what they feel in a poem. You don't talk about the muse, the nine daughters of science, art, protecting it. But it also is

[35:27]

like to meditate on, some source of inspiration. Zayami makes a big thing of that the essential teaching in Uno is secret. And secret because No one would understand it, and if you talk about it, it has no meaning. It's like, I may say, turtle-nosed snake, and we are wondering, what is a turtle-nosed snake? But in some other context I could say to some people, what is a turtle-nosed snake? And they'd say, gee, let's go out and have dinner, let's go to the movies. Or it would have no meaning to them. The turtleneck snake can be a point at which various feelings can gather. What is mine? What is Buddha? What is Yugen? And know what is Yugen, or how to express something. And Yugen is about depth of feeling.

[36:56]

You know, you can't reach bottom of the ocean with a stalk. Trying to reach the bottom of the ocean with a stalk. It says in the 8000 line Prajnaparamita, deep are the stations of form, feeling and thought. Deep are the stations. Deep as trying to reached the bottom of the ocean with a stop. Nyugen is used as a term to mean loneliness and brightness. Loneliness, it's very personal. You can't discuss it. You can't really discuss, certainly, with a large group of people. Why we want to practice it would be somewhat embarrassing. I admire your courage to bring up some topic like sexuality, that we want to talk about. But sometimes to bring it up in a context where you can't talk about it, realistically, is like

[38:22]

to avoid talking about it, to avoid talking to yourself about it, or to actually talk with one other person where you suffer the consequences of your conversation. There's little consequences of conversation with many people. Yugen emphasizes, sometimes it means loneliness. In the sutra they talk about isolated. And it's not tailoring your feeling. If you try to tailor your feeling, you can't... it's not... if you tailor it to... yugen doesn't mean to express something so someone else can understand it. You don't even know if you're going to be able to meet it. And you can't tailor it. So it's very lonely, maybe like crow in the dust. Crow is, I think for most people, not such an attractive bird. So crow, black crow in darkness.

[39:47]

is yugen. But yugen in noh theatre must be based on what they call monomane. Monomane is realism, you know, or imitation, how to exist in a three-dimensional world. If you don't have that noh always, that base of our existence in a three-dimensional world, Eugen is just some cloud. So again, effort in practice is oneness with exactness with three-dimensional world and at the same time that turning point of mind on which myriad phenomena in mind evolve, on which we feel the profundity of our feeling. and which gathers and expresses. And from the point of view of Zen, the man at the window speaking to the world, from the point of view of Zen, everything you do does that. Every action you take reaches everyone.

[41:24]

So practice itself is inherently secret, but it arises from trying to be open, not doing anything you think needs to be secret, trying to be open actually with yourself. And it's the only way you can really be open. Activity is transparent but you don't try to explain it or understand it conceptually. But deep stations, deepest sense, you cannot explain, and you can't share it even. You can express it, but no one may understand it. You can't express it expecting it to be shared or to have some feedback. That is why Jügen emphasizes loneliness or isolation.

[43:18]

You just express it. You find through practice some way to express deep feelings that you can't reach the bottom of. So we are here, separated and joined. And we need to understand in our practice how we are separated and how we are joined. And you can make a choice by your anxiety or your trust to emphasize one idea. And it's up to you. It's not, as I said last time, something passive, something you can wait to have happen to you. I remember someone I went to college with. Well, I was in college, he lived in the town.

[44:59]

He was a painter. I remember him saying, when I'm thirty-five, I will realize mystical truths. And he had some idea Buddha did and Christ did and so forth. I thought it was a rather strange idea. I don't mean that In fact, I feel a little uneasy telling you what happened to him, to make my point with his suffering. I don't feel so good about it, but he went completely crazy. And for me, I've always felt his not taking responsibility and expecting these forces to take care of him.

[46:00]

as part of it. You decide what to do and to make your effort and sustain it. Everything is acknowledgement or realisation and intention. And to find out these, knowledge and intention. And to decide yourself without complaint. So the trust I mean, where you may be disturbed about something but you see deeper level too, isn't the trust of larger forces than yourself. But the recognition of those forces, of yourself at wider level, joined and separate.

[47:51]

Wave follows wave and wave leads wave. Dogen said we should not... Dogen, the economist, said, we shouldn't store food but gather it every day. I think that's quite good. Of course, if you have a field, you're storing food. The minute you clear a field, you are, in effect, storing food. But we draw some line. We don't build big grainers. Some... You can't apply something like that too rigidly, but the feeling... To each day, gather your sustenance. to change the topic a little bit. I don't know what will happen with the restaurant and the bakery and so forth. It's curious to me. You know, I think it's inevitable and necessary that we do what we're doing, but that's only short-run necessity.

[49:27]

But another unspoken thing we don't talk about is some disdain for business. Stuart Brand has an interview in Pacific Sun a while ago with the publisher of Pacific Sun and the publisher of Mother Jones, which is quite interesting about business. and so deep a put-down of business. And I've always rather rejected businessmen. I had to, for me, very strong, turning around when I was about 20 or so, in which I decided, up to that point, half of me wanted to find some security or do some normal life, establish something, earn a living.

[50:48]

I can remember I was working as a waiter, actually, in a restaurant in the summer, in the lower bunk of this sort of house dormitory. I suddenly felt this... I wouldn't ever concern myself with that. It wasn't just a matter of displeasure or put down, but I just physically decided to feel this, to never again would I concern myself with such things, seriously. And yet, I've been working in various jobs since I was, I don't know, I started babysitting when I was about five. And caddying when I was about third grade. Setting pins when I was in eighth grade. Newspaper before that. Every kind of job. And then, usually working about 40 hours a week during high school.

[52:17]

So I've done, and I've learned so much. I used to sell peanuts at Forbes here. What's good for the apes is good for you. Ten million monkeys can't be wrong. Get you a cup of roasted peanuts. I've learned a lot, you know, even though, you know, you have to go at a certain hour and stop and you're there, kind of, forcibly, you know, you can't leave so easily. You'd think maybe my time would have been more productive if I'd done the things I wanted to do or studied, but actually I learned a lot from being forced to be in certain situations. Very much. So maybe I just don't know what it means. Certainly I see groups trying to raise money from individuals, trying to do it through contributions, and the way they cater to individuals is more than even a traditional business has to cater to people, or make compromises, or the pressure they put on individuals. I prefer what we're doing.

[53:51]

I don't know what it means. You know, there's always been Buddhists, of course, in China and Japan. Lay Buddhists have always been small shopkeepers. But we have found being a priest is better than being a shopkeeper. I don't know if that's true. Certainly, some of us will devote our full time to helping people practice. living Buddha's way of life, you know. But maybe Buddha's way of life is sometimes also to do whatever anyone else does. And I feel it's pretty hard to talk to people, you know, understand people, unless you've also been crazy or a shopkeeper. or poor or rich. So maybe we'll find some combination where working at the bakery, you know, in my mind maybe a bakery and if the rest of it works, eventually in a few years we'll be separated from Zen Center. But maybe they won't, maybe they'll remain. It's sort of part of being in college.

[55:21]

You know, if we had Mountain Gate College and people studied, maybe they'll study and work and... I don't know, I really don't. I mean, right now I see it as something valuable to do, but in the long run I don't know what it means. I'm just sharing my thoughts about it with you. involves lots of things we don't usually talk about, our personal justifications for why we do things or what we're doing. And those personal justifications, those things you can open up. But why do you practice? What gives you some strength? How do you find your center? That we can't share. And the deeper your feelings, the more you can't share it. But we can express it. And for Buddhism, that expression reaches everyone. Even though you can't share it or tailor it, it reaches everyone. Like the man up the window. We are all

[56:45]

at a threshold, a window that opens or reaches everyone. Whatever you're doing, you're on such a threshold. Enlightenment itself is described as being on a threshold. If you know this threshold, I think we can find our way in this country to practice and to express deep, deep nature of human being. I'm going to go to the city today, and today is Thursday, right? And I'll be back Tuesday. I'm sorry to go away, but I've been very glad to be able to be here this morning. Thank you very much.

[58:12]

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