and talk to the Vex about the pines, and it's possible. There's such a land grab going on out there at Lambers Ranch, and I feel stupid, you know, actually, about it, because It's tea, it's not water. Actually, I wonder what those little critters were. It's rice, right? Yeah. Rice krispies. I feel a little stupid because we could have, you know, we could have bought Lambert's Ranch. I mentioned this to a few of the show signers. We could have bought Lambert's Ranch for a few hundred thousand dollars just a few years ago. Lambert offered it to me several times. He said, you know, you guys better buy this. And now 40 acres goes for, you know, a hundred thousand dollars up there now. Some of the land has changed hands three times already, I believe.

[01:17]

I guess each time you can divide it a little more and you can put some capital into surveying and all, which Lambert didn't have to do. And partly I didn't do it because, you know, Lynn Center has enough of what seems like wild schemes of mine sometimes. or projects that are too big for us to do. But that wasn't really the reason I didn't push the idea. I did look at it with Huey Johnson and some other people at the time of... it happened to be at the time of the recession, whenever that was. 73, 74? 73, 74. And... There was no money available for trust for public land or niche conservancy or anything else, let alone for buying a piece of land, which is hard to demonstrate its usefulness to anybody but us. So I didn't. But I could have come back to it after the recession, and I'm sure it was possible. The real reason is not that I didn't think Sen Center would go along with the idea, but because I myself am rather inflexible on the point of... I really can't...

[02:35]

You know, I say, we don't live on Mars, we have to accept the way life is on Earth, but sometimes I'm on Mars myself, and I kind of don't like it that people buy land and speculate in it, so I kind of pretend it's not going to happen. And I have some sort of hope that Janesburg will always remain a little country town, like the little country towns there should be a few left, but it's not going to happen. Carmel's going to move straight on up to Greenfield. Won't be long till it's, I think, pretty much solid Carmel all the way up to Greenfield, to 101. But, you know, it's all right. Maybe whoever moves in, I mean, we can make some good use of it. I'm sure all those people who move in can practice Buddhism and stuff like that. We'll have to build a big Zen Dojo. We can wave to people as we drive by and stuff like that. But if I'd been more practical, you know, and a little more flexible, we could have bought the ranch and then actually sold some parts of it, which is, I have never been able to sell anything, you know, but sold some parts of it to people who wanted it and could afford it and would like to be there and so forth, and then paid for the whole ranch with the parts we sold.

[03:58]

and sold it to people, there are a number of people I know who'd like to buy places, who are kind of members of the community, who'd like to buy places near Tassajara. They would have bought the land, and in effect paid for the ranch, and we could have controlled the development and left most of it empty. Anyway, we didn't, so... We've got quite a... I think there's going to be a lot of stuff happening in the next few years, building and subdividing all along up the road. I hear even that, as I think I mentioned, The field right before you get to the gate to the National Forest is all subdivided on the plots with curbs and gutters and all that stuff. And there's been plans in one place to put a fairly large trailer park in. Of second homes, you know, for hunters and stuff like that. And that's what I think could happen very easily in the horse pasture. Not the horse pasture, but the pines. Since it's... You don't have to put a road in, it's immediate access and it's got enough building sites to be useful. So, Bob and Anna and I talked, and Ed Satterson joined us, and we came to... They haven't been speaking in some months, so... But, despite their idealism and romance, we did come to an agreement, which I think is reasonable enough, which is

[05:27]

the best we can do, I believe. We came to a decision to verbally agree on a price and not worry about what somebody might tell them later. I don't know if they'll stay to it, because they could easily be told by some realtor who wants the land to be worth more and is willing to take a chance in selling it more. And then if they sell it for less, he's already got a commission, because a realtor will price it what he hopes it will be. And most of you don't know right now, with inflation so high, people are willing to pay almost anything, which doesn't look like dollars. So, anyway, we agreed on a price, verbally, of $100,000, which is $625 an acre. I think that's possible to raise that much money. I told him we had a down payment of $10,000, which we may not actually have, but I thought at the time we did. we can try to raise the money by asking people to help to buy one acre for $0.10. I think it's possible somehow. And we have received a loan for enough money, I think,

[06:47]

to at least move the Tara into the building. That's the first step. We move it into the building when we pay for half. So we have a loan that will allow us to move it into the building. And I hope there'll be another loan forthcoming so she doesn't have to move out December 15th. I'm not sure she's worth $6,000 for only 30 days, but perhaps. Anyway, and we have the horse pasture, which is... Because the Vex promised the land to us, they're willing to make some kind of arrangement, but for Bob, you know, that promise is as vague as Zen thinks long, and in a few centuries you'll have it somehow or other. You know, what you say is something like that. Yes, Bob, I'm sure maybe that's true. That has nothing to do with you and me making an agreement. Maybe if we think long enough we'll own America someday or something like that. But it doesn't mean anything to say that, I think.

[08:17]

they did make an agreement that we'll somehow legally tie the horse pasture to... they'll give it to their children who are 16 and 12, but the children will be somehow legally committed to sell it or give it to Zen Center. It's not clear whether you can actually create such a legal agreement that looking into it. The other thing I was going to show you in the way of a general meeting is a set magazine called Interior's Magazine. It's sort of an architecture. It's doing a piece on the restaurant. I suddenly, when I did this, I suddenly thought, was it Virginia, was it you who was at the doctor's office at Suzuki Rishi? It's Virginia? Yeah. Yeah, but I don't have my glasses on. Looks like it. Looks like you're outlined back there. Fill in the spaces later. Anyway, Suzuki Rishi was at the dentist's office. Dentist? Doctor's office, I believe.

[09:55]

acupuncture man in Japan and he had his new book had just come out and it has his picture of course on the back. He was looking at it, he'd never seen it before, so Jimmy showed it to him, he was looking at it and all the people in the dentist office were going... doctor's office, they're looking for the back. So he went... he held the book up to his table. Oh, yes. Pat? Yes? Could you go get those things? She knows that. Anyway, it's kind of nice pictures. It says, it has a kind of flip text. It says, an uninspiring, disused, concrete warehouse may seem hardly the right ambiance for dining, but with enterprise and imagination anything can be made to work.

[11:12]

Tassajara means a lot to people in California who like good food. The Tassajara Bakery in San Francisco is jammed with customers all day long. They enjoy the fresh-baked, on-the-premises breads and cakes. It was good news to those sweet-toothed fans that the bakery was expanding. Not opening just another bakery shop, but a restaurant, too. Of course, everyone knew it had to be different. The people who run the bakery enterprise belong to the Zen Center, and they tend to do things in a special way. The Zen group let artists take over the interior design. Sort of. Edward Avedisian, who painted up a storm in the interior of the Tassar Bakery and its companion needlework shop. Red, blue, and yellow walls was assigned the job of creating large abstract paintings to hang like murals. You see what I mean by being flipped. He got so enthusiastic that he started painting equally vivid fabrics for tablecloths and banquette seat covers. Sculptor J.B. Blount produced an amazing and vast environmental piece of carved wood that formed seating and tables at the cafe and at the restaurant.

[12:29]

Three huge ethereal paintings by Shunryo Suzuki Roshi. We're given a special place on the wall overlooking the blank masterwork. With crisp white paint and industrial roof dressing, now painted black with canister downlights punched in its rigid geometry, the restaurant has the feel of an art studio. It is the absolute antithesis of that restaurant type known as motel modern. There's not a plastic surface to be seen, nor a smidgen of heavily draped curtain. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, it goes on, it's all right. Yeah, it says it's good. It says the food comes mostly from the Tassajara farm. Fresh vegetables, greens. Roshi, who manufactured this script? Somebody named Beverly Russell. The photograph, the photography is by John Nahr. It's in this magazine.

[13:46]

Here's something done by Computer Offset from Albuquerque that I thought you'd really appreciate. Did you bring the pieces of paper with you? I'm going to start jogging in it. We could put it on the altar. We could put it on the Tara. Actually, we could put it on the Gandharan Buddha. Thirty-five years from now, everybody would think it was a miracle, like a broken... There's no electricity and no computers. And then, if you want to keep in tune with the times,

[15:01]

The first I found out about him was last night. I guess this is to be framed. There's a certain charming innocence, I suppose, about it, but I'd be more charmed if they'd asked us first. Oh, there's the card guys. Photorama, computer portrait services, t-shirts, calendars, wall-hanging, custom letterings by two women at Big Bend Albuquerque. He says, Dear friends, the form of the Master has been a source of inspiration and a direct statement of perfection for thousands of years. How can you argue with that? They've got you, it's a double bind. When the master is physically absent and our hearts forget his constant presence, photographs help to relight the spark of remembrance. Now, for the first time, you can have a computerized portrait of your master, teacher, or guru. I'm having my picture sent right away. Or guru. And all of you, one of these pictures. I think one of those pictures after the Shuso ceremony.

[16:41]

And you can have it nicely printed on a calendar or t-shirt. All t-shirts are a first quality blend of 65% polyester and 35% cotton. The cost of a t-shirt with a photo is $7.95, add $0.75 for postage and handling. Our calendars of 1980 are also blah blah blah. If you want a quantity 10 to 30, we can get it for $6.50 each. And we can get it for $30 each. We can take your orders after this. I think Vanya's brother is going to start praying to me. Do we have any legal recourse? I don't know. I guess Ed Satterson or Rev is going to phone and say, hey there. But it's really, they want us to buy them. It sounds like we're being offered this grand service. We are. So maybe they won't be made available. Is that a form letter? What kind of form letter, Heather?

[17:52]

And we don't either. The picture... I guess sort of we do, actually. But the picture was taken by a man named Bob Boney. And he really owns the rights. But he sort of turned them over to Zen Center as well. I wonder what moved those people to do this. I don't know. Let's give it a positive interpretation. I don't know, they're probably, they're well-intentioned, probably. I mean, they could be, I don't know, doing something else. How do you share what we're doing? Is this the way we do it or is greens the way we do it?

[19:39]

Norman asked me a question once, some years ago, which has been a kind of problem for me, that I'm trying to seek a way to talk about it, you know. And I think what you brought up was, doesn't Buddhism come down to a kind of harmony? Like everything should be in harmony. And isn't harmony a restrictive idea? Because what about a little chaos? Anyway, you said something like that, right? And that's pretty hard. I found it very difficult. I mean, I don't have any problem with it. How can I say? My problem with it is in how to talk about it. And I think... I say often, you know, Buddhism is based on the idea that everything changes. You have to accept that if you're going to practice Buddhism. But it's also based on the idea that everything's related. And if you didn't have the idea that everything's related,

[21:10]

and the idea that everything isn't related. But, you know, Buddhism says, right, there's suffering. One book says it's… Buddhism says there's misery. Well, misery is… you need a bigger word than misery. Suffering is better than misery. And it says that misery comes from desire. Well, I don't think desire is a big enough word either. It comes from… that there's a cause of suffering. And cause really means, I think, relationship, that everything's related. And because everything's related, you can free yourself from suffering. But that's a very interesting idea. And then that there's a path. So, you have this suffering, and then you have that there's a cause of suffering, would be dharma. stop it and be Buddha, if you like, if you want to coordinate this. And if you, the path would be Sangha. Now, recently, having been reading here and there in Western philosophy, as I said yesterday, I keep being struck by how close various philosophers came to Buddhism.

[22:49]

Since I'm practicing Buddhism, that's, of course, my curiosity, which is, why didn't they hit on the idea of Dharma? Well, they almost did. And you have Spinoza and Leibniz, contemporaries, and Leibniz kind of putting Spinoza down, saying there's not enough math to really thought out what he meant. And Spinoza, you know, grinding away at his lenses, and not... and not... really being understood or read much, which is true of Leibniz too, until both of them were quite dead. And that right there is a big difference with Buddhism. Because I think that the two things that are different, if I try to look, I mean, the idea of Non-theism is not the difference. In other words, they kept trying to reconcile or deal with a theistic world, so they'd come to various kinds of ideas of what God would be. And... I don't know if you should be lying on the table like that.

[24:11]

The big difference that I see is, as I say, it's not theism or non-theism, because both of those are basically ideas. Non-theism is also an idea. But the difference is the practice of zazen, or jhana, or meditation, and Buddha reached his understanding after practicing meditation. And the second is sangha, which is the commitment to mutual understanding. that you have to get one other person to understand you. That's quite different. Spinoza didn't have to get one other person to understand him. Not just that the saints don't have to get one other person to understand them, because God will carry that through. But the philosophers didn't have to either. And in fact, you could write your books or letters or whatever, express your ideas.

[26:11]

and they might be understood in later generations or something. And it takes, if your means of expressing yourself is in books, no one is really going to understand you in one generation. It usually takes a hundred years or so to assimilate the ideas. I mean, it takes quite a long time to assimilate. You know, you can sort of read Spinoza if he's your contemporary, but to really get at it, it's very difficult. It's this Columbus problem. How do you see something that's right before you? And also, if you're coming from, you've got your own life, and you only have so much time. I mean, here I'm living 43 years so far. Even if I devoted myself constantly, I suppose, to one person, it still takes, through books, it takes a tremendous amount of time to actually understand that other. You can understand portions of it. It could stimulate your own thinking to your own, but to actually understand the other person, it's quite difficult.

[27:34]

So the idea of Sangha links you to your contemporaries. Maybe your other generations are going to understand you too. But you have an obligation to be understood by your contemporaries. To make somebody else understand, or to share. But rather not just make someone else understand your ideas, but the understanding is mutual. Now, we do the Buddha drum. I think a little too coordinated with the idea of harmony. What I'm getting at here is the idea of harmony is a rather Western idea related to individuality. And I think it is a restrictive idea. I think the idea of oneness is less restrictive. And to Buddhism we say one and yet two. But one and yet two is not the idea of harmony. So, like the Buddha drum up there, I guess this has happened over a number of years, I've watched it happen, but it's now coordinated so closely to the doshi or the soku, that I suppose if the soku tripped, you know, the drum would go down, and then the doshi stood back up again. And if you move forward a little faster, the drum picks up, and then if you pause or something, or you coughed, it would slow down a little bit.

[29:10]

So it's your really tight feeling, you know. The drum basically should just go... And the soku should do his or her own thing up there, you know. You know, you're moving in relationship to each other, but it doesn't have to be so tightly, you know, if we want harmoniously linked. It can have a... If you say everything's one, then you have to deal with difference in a different way. You're not trying to relate difference. There's a relationship. You're not trying to relate difference. So... If we say... Sometimes we say Sangha is all people. But that doesn't... That's not a... That's true. That's one definition of Sangha. It means being or people. But if that's the only meaning it had, it wouldn't mean anything. It's like saying... Because as soon as you say Sangha, it's a structural idea. It's an expression of the whole. I mean, it's like saying... Huey Newton, you know, people say, it's for the people. And a friend of mine said to Huey Newton, how come when you say the people, I always feel left out?

[30:32]

Which is true, you know, you do feel somebody says the people. You mean people who get with being what the people are and those who don't aren't the people or something like that. So Sangha, as an idea, is like that. You can't say the people and mean everyone as soon as you say something like the people. And that's of course a very powerful idea. Our government, I say, always talking about the same thing. Well, our government's always talking about the same thing, for the people, by the people, and so forth. But, you know, it's not really for the people and by the people. How do you make it actually for the people and by the people is something you have to continually talk about. Russia is the people's republic, or no, China is the people's republic, isn't it? China is the people's republic. But sangha, we can say sangha means those people who are ordained. That's one meaning of sangha, of course. Who decide to lead Buddha's way of life, as I put it, visibly. But I think we can say that sangha means, in a slightly wider sense, it means those people who commit themselves to mutual understanding. Who commit themselves to create a situation where you can have mutual understanding.

[31:51]

And it's a little difficult sometimes because your friend's family, I don't know, who, your society may not, and supposedly in Buddha's time, society did give Buddha and the monks kind of a hard time. Hey, you guys aren't working, you should be out working. You're wandering around begging for, and it's a big nuisance, and so forth. And Buddha supposedly told them, just keep calm. It's all right, they'll come around. So we're trying to create a situation in which we can have mutual understanding, not just come to some insight ourselves, have mutual understanding. And it may be at some opposition to other elements of our society or of our family who think we ought to be doing something else. but there's always going to be some problem like that. But anyway, so I do see Zen Center as that effort, and we're in a prejudiced situation. In other words, all effort of... or a major direction, at least, of Western society has been toward a kind of individuality, and you're doing it on your own, so we feel much more... we're kind of wary of mutual understanding.

[33:24]

And also, we come from such diverse backgrounds. And to me, it's a small miracle that a group of people like this, from such diverse backgrounds, can actually join in this effort of mutual understanding. I suppose that's partly how I conceive of greens as various ways and why my conception of the Sangha then includes children and things because it's not so much ordained people, just, but ordination as meaning for me. Those people commit themselves to Buddha's way of life and to mutual understanding at the present time, not through books or something like that. So like Spinoza and Leibniz would have to almost live together and get to know each other so thoroughly that they would understand each other. Each could write the other's book. It still permits Buddhism to change, for you to want to have any kind of new idea, it's just that you also have to be able to have that new idea also arise as a mutual understanding.

[34:53]

that he was able to communicate to other people. Yeah, it's the same. I think that he knew he could communicate to other people is somewhat similar to Einstein thinking, my thought is of the nature of being. So anyway, that's a little more comment on your question about harmony a few years ago. Anybody, any other questions? I may get to your answer in a few years. As long as you... I mean, from a Buddhist point of view, as long as you can throw a monkey wrench into it, there's not unity. There's not one monkey wrench. There's harmony. You can disturb harmony with a monkey wrench, but you can't disturb what Buddhism means by unity. Well, if you had unity, there wouldn't be a monkey wrench outside of it. That's right. That's Manjushri, he's out there with a monkey wrench. Manjushri's out here with a monkey wrench, Buddha.

[36:52]

in many ways. I think it's strange. The main problem I see with people's practice is not lack of intelligence, intention, or I don't know what, but it's thoroughness, lack of thoroughness. We do things like, I noticed, we would hang a lantern on a coat rack. There's all kinds of small, I mean, there's hundreds of things I do You're doing something you're not paying attention to. To something as a complete in its completeness. But that completeness is not... If you really try to be complete in that way, you can't get everything in harmony. You can't... We won't have... I mean, I noticed that there's a lot of rules around here. People try to tie what happens to a previous rule and this didn't go because we didn't do that. That's not what I mean by thoroughness. Yeah, and that's one reason, as I've said so often, we come to Tassajara, because it's a place where there's enough order, meals are going to be taken care of and so forth, that you can do at least, you know, do things that in previous situations you'd get fired for. No one down here is going to get fired. The work leader might find something for you to do.

[38:57]

So you can begin to really, you know, you don't... I think on the sidewalks of the world you, you know, have to keep yourself pretty straight there, which is useful, particularly if you're disturbed. And one reason we go through Tangario, I mean, the main aspect, how Tangario, I've talked to somebody about this recently, how Tangario differs from, say, Seixin, is that it's marked by a lack of order. You don't know quite what it's going to be when you get into it and no one will tell you, usually. And there's no particular time when a period ends or when you constrain. You have to decide on your own what's going to happen. Whether you sit long periods or short periods or you don't move the whole time or whether you find that your bladder is disturbing you often or seldom. And a person who can't go through that kind of situation, which also exacerbates everything. The heat gets worse, the flies get worse, everything gets worse when there's a lack of order. Everything seems... Which other people who aren't in Tangario are going through the same day and the heat doesn't seem as bad and the flies don't seem as bad. So, the ability to go through that situation without much support to and with a general aura of unfriendliness around you.

[40:29]

is a kind of thing that this monastic life has devised to warn people who can't do that they shouldn't try. But then, once you're past that little initiation, the situation here is quite, I hope, is quite supportive, but within that predictive situation, You don't have to worry, like you do on the sidewalks, about how you're going to eat, where you're going to live, and so forth. You can let go of another kind of control. And finally, in your zazen, you really have to let go so completely that you have nothing but trust in the beginning, and finally not even trust. Practicing with such ideas while you're making lunch is useful. I mean, I think it's like Spinoza grinding lenses. It seems to me those people, like Leibniz was a courier, a diplomatic courier, I believe, and a tutor to various political or kingly types, their children.

[42:39]

I bet a lot of professors at universities would not want to do. And I've admired the scholarship of people who are amateur scholars, you know, colonial administrators in India. Sassoon's work on Salma. I don't... you know, I... The situation of the... I guess it's not always detrimental, but a person who can... who has the sense of their life to do nothing but science, and nothing but philosophy, and they're supported to do philosophy all their life, it might be better to support yourself some other way. And I think this is getting my own bias. I think it's the kind of situation we have where we have to do the service, all the various things we have to do, as well as feel through what life is about. To me it seems the ideal situation. And I guess as you may have heard the statistic, there are more scientists living today by many factors than have ever lived in the history of the world.

[44:04]

sheer quantity. And of course there are some significant, lots of legwork being done and there's some significant breakthroughs. what you're doing when you're practicing is you're very much like a scientist or a philosopher who's trying to look fresh outside their own culture at society or at their life. And so while you're cooking, that kind of thing comes up. How do I drop descriptions in order to get lunch? I mean, I drop descriptions in order to make lunch and no one will eat. So somehow, She dropped descriptions the other day and dropped a soup that was quite fantastic. She said she had some soup made for Virginia and Renee's arrival in the middle of the night. They thought that it might come in handy.

[45:24]

midnight. So I said to her, oh, you made some soup, maybe I'll have some. What is it? I said, she kind of crumpled. I said, what is it? The word soup. She was maintaining her dignity with the word soup. For the ingredients, she kind of crumpled. I said, no, it can't be that bad. I said, what's, what's in it? And she said, well, I don't know how to make soup. I said, come on, fess up. What's it? She said, soy sauce, ketchup and wine. I've, uh, never heard of a soup like that. But, uh, you know, toss it around. So we're drinking liquid peanut butter these days. Sometimes I can skip that.

[46:42]

But so we asked her, we said, you know, where there's suffering and soup, there's a cause. So I said, what is the cause? And she said, gosh, no, she was in Scandinavia. In Scandinavia, they say that Americans are foolish because they make spaghetti with real tomatoes and they should be made with tomato sauce. I mean, ketchup, right? Something like that. So in Scandinavia, they make sauce for spaghetti with ketchup. So she remembered that. Debbie always adds wine. What? When Lucy's cooking and anything goes wrong, Lucy adds wine. Oh. So that was the second ingredient. Where did the third ingredient come from? The other thing was when I was making a soup from leftover Thanksgiving meal with my boyfriend's mother. And we were coming together and she said, add soy sauce. and produced two thermoses of hot soup, and I drank one of them. It was quite good, yeah. It's gonna be a regular, I have it every time.

[48:01]

Yes, I guess so. Can you hear me? I did? What did I say then? Oh, and somebody told you that? Hear that? You like the Samantabhadra. Well, I talked about him yesterday. Aaron, with an Aaron, Noah mix-up. When we translate him in the meal chant as shining practice, maybe loving practice is better. But he's, what did I say? Loving intention. Yeah. I have to think about it more myself. In some context, I use it. To talk about it is more kind of like a field. Patience, very responsive, kind of enduring. So much about it represents a kind of enduring, patient, caring practice. In that sense, Manjushri represents more insight.

[49:56]

Yes? Could you say something about what the Torah represents? Oh, goodness. People asked me yesterday, and I said that I specifically didn't want to know much about the Torah before we got it, because to me it has to work at a level which has nothing to do with what it, you know, just as a figure. So I was only concerned with whether I felt good or bad in front of him. I felt quite good, so. But there is something I don't know exactly, but there's something like 23 forms of Tara. A lot of them are fierce. And the two main ones, as Philip pointed out yesterday, are the green and white. And green is considered to be the original Tara. And I believe the word, one description says the word green is a corruption of meaning original. So what's informed the Lamas or something called Tara green, maybe I'm painting her green. And Shilpa said that white, green Tara usually has a leg down, and white Tara often has eyes on their hands.

[51:35]

And though sometimes people get the iconography mixed up, you know, whoever the person making it is. And Tara sometimes, I guess the green Tara is considered to be the Shakti of Avalokiteshvara and the white Tara, the consort of Avalokiteshvara. I don't know quite what the difference between a Shakti and a consort are, Ha ha ha ha ha! Yeah, because of the Tibetan emphasis on two golds and three golds and so forth. I really like three golds. Anyway, because of the emphasis on reincarnation and so forth, these two princesses, I guess the Chinese one was associated with a white Tara and the Kashmirian with a green Tara or something, but it's Tibetan king or something.

[53:52]

was, and they were then considered to be reincarnations. They had to be reincarnated into something, so they were reincarnated into green and white tarot, and so forth. But all of that stuff is not, you know, we have a man-made effort here, right? Man, that's a generic term. And I don't think we have to worry so much about all those things, except as those elements really do come across, because form does have, you know, a figure with his foot down, a figure with his legs crossed. It's a somewhat different feeling for us. And Dorches with the points not touching, which are usually for fierce But other than that kind of difference, I think really what we're talking about is, as the scope says, it's a female form of Buddha, a female expression of Buddha. And it is related to Avalokiteshvara and to Amida Buddha as compassion and saving people. And also, I believe it was considered in Tibet one of the only Buddha rank you could get to without the intermediary of a lama. All the others you had to have professional intervention there.

[55:14]

You know, some professional like me. With Tara, you can go directly to Tara. So, you know, in Zen we can go directly. So, anyway. So, Tara and, you know, we have, I think, what we're emphasizing in Zen is Manjushri and Shakyamuni. and Avalokiteshvara, and we have that big Amida statue, which I think is good to include, it's a wonderful statue in the city. And now we have Tara, part of our pantheon. We can work with that for a while. Is that enough information on Tara? Um... What do you mean? Do you want them to represent beings that actually exist? Do you think they do? Are there actually... Is there someplace in the world we have Buddha? Yeah. Are you a being that actually exists? I don't know who I am.

[56:42]

Yeah, all right, so where's Amida Buddha then? You know, we're talking about no self, and getting rid of your description, then we add a new description, Lady Buddha, or Gentleman Buddha, or something like that. I suppose they have to go to different rooms, I don't know. But, so you can say, you know, let's get rid of all these descriptions. And what's an altar for? Well, it's always been an interesting problem for me, what's an altar? And it always, you know, keeps me straight, these altars. Gives me something to do. And I always find it's quite a bit of nuisance, you know. But I always appreciate it. And it's one of the elements

[57:43]

It's one of the elements that's definitely been given to me by practicing Buddhism with Suzuki Ueshiba. I wouldn't have come up... Well, that's not quite true. You know the story about Krakow. When I was a kid, my family had this little Buddha statue, which was way back. Anyway, he was around and I never knew much about it. But I asked my mother what it was, and she said, I think that Buddha's statues have an influence on you, whether the legs up or down, and so forth. And they sit around everywhere, in jewelry stores, in art stores, all over the United States. You can find them propped here and there where you don't find Christ on a cross, among the diamonds. find Buddhas in bookstores, jewelry stores, art stores, clothing stores, and so forth. Anyway, there was this guy, this man with a little pewter thing. And I'd ask him, they'd say, Buddha. And I always forgot the name. And then I remembered the story as, I always forget everything. I always have to, lucky for me, I have to keep figuring things out all over again. Anyway.

[59:12]

I remembered this story as I was looking on a map. I tried reading the Bible when I was about seven. I was discouraged from doing a lot of things, because people kept saying, you're too young to read the Bible. So I'd stop. And I thought I was doing something funny or wrong. But I found every such an important book, so I kept trying to read it. It really was dense, I must say. But I would port over old maps for some reason, and I found this city called Krakow somewhere. It looked very mysterious out there, way off. And I thought that was the origin of the word Kreykow, but then it turns out there's a children's book that called something Kreykow, the little boy from Kreykow. The Bugler of Kreykow, which was a prize-winning children's story about the time I was seven or eight years old. And it's very likely that my aunt, who always sent me such things, sent it to me. And I do remember the story. I'd probably get from there as well as finding it on a map. So when I was about in 6th grade, 6th grade, or 5th grade, 6th grade, we lived in this tract house bought with a, you know, GI loan from my half-brother. And there wasn't much room in it, and I slept in the basement in some bunk bed with my brother. And there was this ladder that went up, and it was all damp and musty down there, and there was this ladder that went up,

[60:40]

I got this little figure, and I stuck it on a bed. Buckets were painted red for some reason. My father made them. And then there's this red ladder, and I put this guy on it. I called him Kraykow. And I put a candle below it. I don't know where I got that idea because I was brought up as an atheist. And I got all the kids in the neighborhood to come in. It's one o'clock every... Ask me why. At one o'clock every, you know, predestination, reincarnation, all that stuff. Anyway, I don't worry about those descriptions. Anyway, there I was. I got them all to come in at around one o'clock every day during the summer. And I don't know how long we continued it, a week or two. And everyone would line up and they'd say, bow to Graco, bow to Graco. And we'd march in this line around chanting, bow to Graco. Then we'd all go out and play. I don't tell that story very often. It's only about the third time I've ever told it. Anyway, alters have always been, I can't, what the heck, but it does give you something to do that you don't have reasons for doing, which I think is extremely important. You have no reason in particular to do it. And it's,

[62:12]

And it's a place where you treat everything with care. It's very clear you treat everything with care there, as you probably should do all the time. Area set up where you treat things with care. And it represents that. And also, it doesn't work unless it's also a place of bowing and of purity and unambivalence. Unless you can keep coming there, kind of unambivalently bowing. And it's a real effort, too. There's a brightness to an altar. You can make that kind of effort there. So, that's where we made a little bit of progress toward Amida Buddha living in the Pure Land over there. So we are, Sukhya, she used to say, Ego covers everything. Instead of get rid of your ego, ego covers everything. If causation is dharma and dharma is seeing your relationship with the phenomenal world, so-called phenomenal world, then you can't do that if you're with ego.

[63:35]

So, I think in practice we find out... I can approach this two ways. I think in practice you find out that partly you can't find a description of yourself because there's no description, any description is And when the destriction, finally, that there's no boundary to the restriction and within that boundary is Avalokiteshvara, Amida Buddha and so forth. And that these also are all practices and you can find out by a feeling for Tara or Avalokiteshvara or Amida Buddha or Manjushri. way of practicing so much reason in the buddha hall, in the zendo, shakyamunis, in the buddha hall. Also, well, that's both ways. I don't want to make both ways more explicit.

[65:10]

I think sometimes when we're practicing with the Shi and we have some concentration And that is the process of one building to another. Well, um... Castaneda's book aside, though I find his

[67:00]

about yes and no, I'm talking about a very practical kind of attitude, but much on the surface of our mind. And yes is wider than no. Yes includes no. So as an attitude, I think yes is a useful thing to try to develop. I don't mean yes by going along with. Somebody always goes along with the other person. sense of no or expectation. Also, they should try something else if I use the word no. But again, Buddhism is not empathy. And I don't... I mean, we could construe the word empathy or one way or the other, but what we usually mean by empathy is able to feel with others or share the feeling with others. Not quite, you know, like that. I think in the Dhammapada someplace it says, you know, there's these five hindrances you're supposed to, you know, see. And then there's, I think there's a verse which goes something like, with joy and

[68:34]

With joy and... Love. With joy and love, be among those who hate. With joy and love, be among those who hate. With joy and something like health, be among those who are sick. And with joy and peace, be among those who are struggling. And with joy, be among those, be among people. With joy and with no possessions, with nothing, be among others. So this is much more emphasis on detachment than empathy. And I think we have a tendency to No is often a way to be empathetic. No is often a way to say yes to this and not to that, or we can't say yes to everything because it would wipe us out. So we say yes a little bit here and no here. And if you say yes to everything completely, you'd be wiped out if you were empathetic. You'd be ground right up.

[70:07]

to be joyful even among those who are sick, to be healthy among those who are sick. It doesn't mean you take on other people's suffering, you understand their suffering, you accept their suffering, you're willing to undergo it, but you yourself, Buddha says, let's take this more kind of positive path. Find that the ear has a capacity without necessarily hearing music, to hear music. that we have a capacity that can, you know, you can stick a little wire in a rat and make him feel good all the time. So we have a capacity to feel okay. And as I've often said, there's a lot of people who go around listening to everybody's suffering, we've talked about this before, and they perk up when somebody's telling them about their suffering. And I'm looking forward to talking about good things that happened to them. And from Buddha's point of view, that just increases suffering. And why you're trying to help somebody is so that you yourself, you know, so that they can be free of suffering. So you should be free from suffering to begin with. And don't take on the characteristics of

[71:31]

I think you can't say yes completely until you can do it. You can have that detachment of being joyful and at peace among those who are struggling. Healthy and joyful. Keeps mentioning joy when you're with people who are sick or poor health. You don't want to come giggling into the hospital, you know. Hi, my Buddha. on me. It's just like that.

[72:40]

Habit I think is, I think of Proust, the word habit comes to mind more than I ever said the word. Talking about his habits or getting habits that allow him not to have to worry about things. Habit. I think habit energy is good, quite descriptive. But what's happening? I think the most useful thing I can say is what I said yesterday. The source is not the beginning. You say, born of beginningless greed, hate, and delusion. Causation is just... You could say that there's all these causes and all the causes. You know, once you get a cause going, you get this thing going here and this thing going here, and then these are not related. They only relate to prior causes, but that's not the case. Because these things here are also related. So...

[74:14]

the source is not prior. So to look at how your thoughts arise or how your habits arise, how you're projected on the screen at the moment, where the tracks are that got you, I think to look at it always with the feeling of source is not prior. But we also have a taste for our habit energy, just like you like a particular cookie, just like I like chocolate chip cookies.

[74:52]

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