I'm just going to answer questions, so if you have any questions about Japan or anything you want, preferably about Japan, I'll try to answer. Yeah? Okay. Any other questions? Yeah. The Japanese monks that you've met, have you had a chance to talk to any of them about why they entered Zen practice or also what their state of

[01:14]

Almost not at all, because I don't know Japanese well enough. I mean, it's that simple. I would guess from what I've observed, most of the monks enter out of, well I've talked with a few actually who know English, and generally they're studying because their father, you know, has a temple or they happen to meet a priest they like and it seems to be a convenient place to live while they go to high school or college, so they live in a Dharma temple. A mixture of different kind of reasons than we, because the choice is very involved in a cultural role. Now, very few of the people seem to, monks seem to choose the kind of reasons we do.

[02:26]

Yeah? Could you maybe expand on what you just touched on now about the differences in culture and what maybe you're coming to see as more what you think or you know as your mind presses upon what you think that is? As opposed to what we're doing as Japanese or what we're trying to do as American. What you think is like a spirit or something like that. Can you hear me in the back here? Yeah, and in a way of answering your question. I went to Japan about a year ago and for this year have mostly been involved in looking at the culture.

[03:35]

I've sat for a while at Antaigi and have attended Teisho at various Rinzai monasteries, but mostly I've been sitting at home and studying Japanese. The emphasis on a year of sort of looking at the culture, which I didn't know how long it would be, was partly intentional and partly unintentional. I knew before I went that of the hundreds of people I've seen go to Japan and seen there, Most of them have been defeated, in my opinion, by the culture, not by Buddhism. They barely have gotten into the point where Zen or Buddhism is too difficult for them. Mostly, the culture is difficult for them. Statistically, almost nobody has made a success of it. In the last ten years, there must be several thousand people who have come to Japan to try to study Zen, and I guess there's four or five who have made a success of it.

[04:44]

a sort of success of it. I guess Philip Kaplow is finished his training, pretty much. Walter Nowick has finished his training, I guess. He started teaching a little. He lives in Maine. Gary went a long ways, but from the technical Rinzai point of view, didn't finish his Koan study. Irmgard Schlegel is quite far along and there are two or three others who are several years along, but for the most part, compared to the total number of people who've gone, there's been almost, I mean, the chances of making a success of it if you go is about zero. Except, you know, one gets something out of it, but very few people get so far as I'd say they're practicing Buddhism. Mostly it's a kind of confrontation with a different culture and a way of life, which is interesting. A lot of people have gotten a great deal out of going for a short time. I would say that the people that Suzuki Roshi sent, of the five or six, about two or three or so of them have stopped and aren't continuing in Zen, but about three or so of them

[05:59]

Gene Ross being one, it's been a very positive experience I think for them. So having the background from here seems to help a lot. I think the most interesting thing from the point of view of practice is for me, and in the larger sense, I think, for all of us, is that Zen is part of a culture, of course, in Japan. And when you're there and you begin to see it as part of a culture, for instance, in my opinion, most of the people there practicing are trying to be Japanese and they've confused an ideal cultural type, like a tea master or a sword master or something, with what a Zen master is. A Zen master should be more like a lama or a good Buddhist person from any country.

[07:04]

And in Japan there's more of a feeling among Americans studying, well they want to end up to be the same as a tea master or something like that. And I think that's a confusion of an ideal cultural type and a Buddhist. person. Like, we may have an ideal cultural type in America, which is not necessarily Buddhist, but eventually, when Buddhism is more in America, the ideal cultural type for America and an ideal Buddhist person will interfuse in various ways. Well, in Japan, they're very interfused. And so, what happens when you're in Japan, I've found, is you begin to see that There's a difference between the cultural type and Zen, and you begin to see that Zen is free from a particular culture. And thus, it begins to show you how Zen is free from your own culture, or how you can be free from your own culture.

[08:06]

Because I'm a little... I've just talked for, it seems like, ten solid days. A week session at Esalen, and then a three-day seminar at Esalen, and then two two-and-a-half-hour lectures in San Francisco. And what I talked about during that time was when you go to Japan to look for Buddhism, the first thing you find is the Japanese mind. That was my experience. And so I began to look at what the Japanese mind was and I found a mind rather different from ours. And I don't I mean, when you attempt to, well, when you think of attachment, generally we think we mean attachment to status or position or wealth or something like that, fame.

[09:12]

But I think attachment in a more fundamental level means attachment to specific ideas of time and space, or inside and outside, or conscious-unconscious, public-private. Very basic distinctions that our whole thinking is organized around. And what I found in Japan, and what I made a case for in the lectures I gave, was that there's a fundamental difference in what, for an Oriental person, past, present, and future are. In fact, I don't think they have the distinctions in the same way we do. And what time and space are, etc. And when you have differences like this, it makes real differences in, I feel, in the way to teach and the way to to free yourself from your own culture. I have a two and a half hour lecture right here on eight cards, which I don't really want to give. I'll give you a couple little examples. One of the problems, if you're learning Japanese, that you have in the beginning, is you have difficulty with the verbs to go and to come, iku and kuru.

[10:40]

One of the difficulties is, for instance, we say, there's a big department store in Japan called Daimaru, and we say something like, tomorrow, come to Daimaru at two o'clock. Well, Japanese people don't say that, they say, tomorrow I'll go to Daimaru at two o'clock, or tomorrow go to Daimaru at two o'clock. And they get confused about how we use the verbs go and come, and we get confused about the way they do. But what happens, you see, if we say, tomorrow I'll come to Daimaru at two o'clock, or tomorrow come to Daimaru at two o'clock, right? We're imagining a future in which we can be there. And we're saying, come to this place where I am tomorrow at two o'clock. And they don't. They say, from this present place where I am, I'll go to Daymaru. And when you begin to notice in various ways, there are many ways, that they don't have the same idea of future as we do, so they don't have the same idea of new.

[11:54]

From many points of view, new is not a positive cultural value as it is for us. fact old is a positive cultural value and so this is all reinforced by Confucian views of the past and etc. and in Japan by the importance of family and ancestor and Shinto etc. so that there's a strong emphasis on the past so much so that I got the feeling that while we are, if you imagine our society like an automobile, you know, and we're looking out the windshield with a small rear-view mirror that the historians have created for us to look in the past, right? Well, the Japanese are going forward with a huge rear-view mirror and a very small windshield as they look around, you know. And they get, they're both going ahead pretty good, you know, and they get there, you know. But the importance of tradition is reinforced at levels which our society just doesn't begin to.

[13:02]

So, when they talk to you about, do it the old way, I mean, it's meant with a depth that we don't really begin to understand. Another little example of that is Michael Kor, who's a woodblock print artist and a friend of mine who studies in Japan. He was making these little woodblock stamps of Buddhas and other things which they used as a practice at one time like repeating Namu Minubutsu or something like that over and over again. They would stamp instead, stamp, [...] you know, stamping Buddhas. And he was carving these things out of cherry wood, right? And he got them all done very beautifully. In fact, some of you who got letters from me may have found it one stamped on the back because he gave me one of his and I would stamp it sometimes the back of one of my letters. But he copied it perfectly, right? But his teacher criticized him because he didn't copy the worn out places. I mean, he had to copy all the broken places and worn out places.

[14:04]

And my reaction was, that way the tradition becomes more and more worn out. But he was supposed to copy it exactly. I mean, that's not even just copying, that's copying it, you know, really copying it. And the same day Michael told me that, I found in a book by Rodin, who's a sculptor much admired in Japan, but who's very Western in his orientation, where he said, copying goes against the very basis of art. To copy is to destroy art. So our own point of view is quite different. Actually, it's not so different, but in some ways it's very different. Dan was at this particular one. I don't want to do it all over again. So any other questions? Well, let me say one thing. One thing I came back feeling is that I

[15:05]

and I went to Japan thinking, well, I might be able to be a traditional, I'm not sure, you know, but maybe I'll be able to be a traditional priest, you know, but I've come back feeling I definitely cannot be a traditional priest. I'm very glad Suzuki Roshi is a traditional priest and I think that I wouldn't and we wouldn't be able to learn from him without him being a traditional priest. It's amazing to me sometimes that he is a traditional priest because he's so unusual compared to most Japanese men. Much, forgive me for saying so, but much quite free of any particular culture, quite unusual I think, but yet still somehow traditional and that's a quite marvelous kind of combination. But I can't definitely I feel I can't be a traditional priest.

[16:08]

I find what Japanese Buddhism in Japan for what Japan's becoming is not functional and I find the Japanese priests aren't wearing robes and I find, for instance, in the Sesshin, I tried an experiment. The Sesshin I did at Esalen, sometimes I wore robes and sometimes I didn't. And I asked the participants how they felt and they felt They could see my practice and see my zazen much better if I didn't have robes. When I had robes on they just saw a priest, you know, but they felt much more connection to me when I didn't have robes on. Today someone told me that two more students are thinking of being priests this fall and two more next spring and I had to take my robes off because I thought I was setting a bad example. But here at Tassajara I don't mind wearing them or in Japan where they're required, but I don't, can't. So that's some change.

[17:09]

I mean, if I go to Japan trying to study Buddhism, I come back not wanting to be a traditional Buddhist, well, at least that's one effect it's had on me. Yeah? In the last wind bell, it's a little thing by Gary Snyder where he says, how much of the Zen practice it gives you a little monastery in. To get, I guess, really close to a teacher to understand this lecture, you need a tremendous amount of linguistic and cultural background you've got to know on modern Japanese, as well as ancient Japanese and ancient Chinese. But I've been told that at Walter Nowick, at his thing in Maine, that there is absolutely no, or just the barest minimum of Japanese ceremony.

[18:12]

I'm not sure if they chant anything in Japanese, they maybe just make one little vow going in. So that it seemed to me that if this kind of cultural background were a necessary thing, that it might only have to function for that one generation of Dharma transmission to get from Japan to America. And after that effort is made, it can become a more American... I think so too. Walter made an arrangement. He never, except peripherally, studied in monasteries. He never lived in the monastery. I don't know anybody who's gone the completed practice for any length of time, in Rinzai anyway, who's done it through monasteries. Everybody who's tried the monastery path has given up in Rinzai. In Soto, I think Peggy Kennett would be a person who's completed training through the monastery path. She's a woman who's now in San Francisco visiting America. But in Rinzai, every person who's tried through the monasteries has given up.

[19:21]

But those who've, the four or five who've gone quite a ways, have always lived outside the monastery and come for Zazen and Sanzen and left. So, and Walter being one who did that, he made a special arrangement with the teacher where he saw him outside the monastery even at another temple. He didn't even go to Daitoku-ji for Sanzen. He may have part of the time, but a good part of time he didn't. But Walter, yeah, Walter did learn quite a lot. I've never met him. I've talked to him on the phone, but he became, had all that scholarly apparatus. For instance, Gary found that he studied Japanese and Chinese three years here in the States, then went to Japan, and it was five more years in Japan before he could handle Rinzai Teisho, before he could understand Rinzai lectures.

[20:24]

It was a total of eight years of language study. Now, on the other hand, you can go to Japan, and enter right into a Soto Monastery or Rinzai Monastery for six months or something like that, or a year, and get quite a lot out of it without too much Japanese. For instance, in Rinzai, in the first koan, you don't need much Japanese. You know, does a dog have a Buddha nature, moo, and they can say that in a few words of English, and then you work on that a year or so. So, you don't need so much English, but if you go further in your Koan study, it becomes very dependent on knowing Chinese and Japanese. Now, in Soto, I don't know enough about the practice itself, since I haven't been in a Soto monastery, and I don't know to what extent you'd have to have so much scholarly work. Komazawa University does not seem to be... so difficult.

[21:25]

I mean, the one person I know who's completed it who knows English. He knows Japanese superbly. He's been in Japan nine years since he was 20. But he's, I would say, quite poorly educated. And he thinks Komazawa is bad. So Komazawa must not be such a good university. So I don't know how much of that one needs, but But if you want to really practice Buddhism fully in Japan, it's a huge job. Anyway. Yeah. She's going to be... she may come down to Tassajara and she may... I know she's... I guess she's giving a lecture tonight in San Francisco.

[22:35]

She was going to give a lecture last night but then Tyson Shimano from New York came and was only going to be in San Francisco last night. So Tyson lectured last night, I understand, and Peggy Kennett's lecturing tonight. She's an interesting woman. She's been in Japan about six, seven years, I guess, and she has a very mixed reputation. Some people don't think so highly of her, and some people do. Anyway, she's here, and maybe you'll see her. She's a big woman. and not to complete it. Right.

[24:12]

Well, my feeling is, if you want to go to Japan, if you think, I want to go to Japan to practice more, something like that, I personally think that's a mistake. I think, first of all, obviously you practice wherever you are, but I think that that if you have confidence that you're practicing completely here, then there's some point maybe to go to Japan. But if you think, I'm going to practice, my practice is okay here, but if I really want to practice Zen seriously and I'm going to go to Japan, I think that's a mistake. I think that you'll find when you get there, you'll find it's not so easy. And I think There's another side of it, which is not so good, I think, too, which is that Zen Center is created by your practice.

[25:18]

And if every time a person feels, well, I can't practice more here, I'm going elsewhere, then Zen Center will cease to be an effective place for people to practice at that point. I mean if all of us who started Zen Center years ago all left for Japan after the first year, you know, Zen Center wouldn't have developed as much as it did because in lots of ways your needs make Zen Center fulfill your needs. And if you take your needs elsewhere then you don't make Zen Center fulfill your needs. And it's not just up to the teachers, it's up to you people also to create the practice. I feel that if you have strong confidence in your practice here, then it may be good to go to Japan to see what the culture is like and what kind of background produced your teacher, and what the way of life is like, the Buddhist way of life is like in a traditional society and which has been established for a long time.

[26:26]

But as for continuing your practice fully, I think you have to do that here, I feel. Yeah? Do a lot of Japanese people know about Zazen, do Zazen? How do they think about it here? I mean, is it even, say, becoming popular with Well, I'd say that everybody in Japan, I would guess almost everybody in Japan knows what Zazen is. Most everybody I meet, unless they have a specific connection with Zen, thinks it's very strange. Zazen? Who would want to do Zazen? Why do you want to do Zazen? Isn't it hurt? The reputation in Japan of Zen is very tough and super tough, super difficult, and they think it's not for them.

[27:42]

But I've met a number of older people who do sit occasionally. who go to a temple to sit once a week or something like that. But I've never met an older ordinary sort of person, non-priest, who sits every day. I've met a lot of ordinary older people who chant every day, Namu Amida Butsu or something like that, who have a daily practice. According to my Japanese teacher whose father is a Jodo Shinshu priest, it's a faith, pure land Buddhism, he says young people now for the most part don't even chant Namu Mirabutsu. But the older people still do have that practice. But my impression is that most Soto and Rinzai priests don't do Zazen either. Maybe sometimes, but my impression is they do Zazen very seldom unless they're in a training monastery. But Suzuki Roshi would know more about that, I don't know. I mean, Soto Zen Buddhism is an enormous religion.

[28:55]

I mean, it's by one count the biggest religion in Japan. Actually, it's second or third biggest, I think, because If you count the two Jodo Shinshu schools together, they're bigger than Soto. But Soto has about 15,000 temples. Well, 15,000 temples and I don't know how many priests, 15,000 priests maybe. You have a very different thing. I mean, it's primarily a part of Japanese culture and that explains most of its activity. But of course, within Soto Zen Buddhism and within Jodo Shinshu and within Rinzai, there's a smaller number of people who are quite sincere Buddhists and practicing a traditional Buddhist way primarily. Those are the people who of course interest us, but even when you look at those people, a large part of their practice, and this is where it's interesting, is actually involved in cultural things. Yeah, it's very difficult to distinct.

[30:09]

You see, many of the most fundamental ideas in Buddhism, like, this is difficult. It's quite difficult to, I mean, ideas about non-dualism and space consciousness or group organizing your experience in a field theory. I don't have the energy to try to make myself understood. Anyway, that some of the ideas fundamental to Buddhism are very close to what Japanese culture, the way Japanese culture is organized. And so, there's a kind of tendency to confuse them. I mean, an obvious example is the Buddhist way of accepting. and there's a Japanese way of accepting. And they look very similar, and so it's very easy to fall into thinking that the traditional Japanese way of accepting whatever happens is the same as the Buddhist idea of accepting, but I think they're quite different.

[31:22]

This relates to Jane's question the other night. with all Buddhists in Japan, I feel, there's this cultural confusion, you know, and just, I mean, we have the same thing here. Yeah. I guess maybe with the people he knew at age, it was kind of an attitude of sadness or something like that. So I was wondering, from the people that you have met, is there a feeling of decline, and what does that mean for a person who's practicing there?

[32:23]

Well, I don't know Japanese priests well enough to know that. To the extent to which I've perceived in that area, Japanese priests find it very difficult to believe anything real is happening in America. They know America's out there and it has potential, but the idea that some actual practice is really happening here is very difficult for them to comprehend and accept. Anyway, when they're in a situation in institutions which are hundreds and hundreds of years old, 800 years old, 500 years old, ordinary little temples are older than America, it's very difficult for them to feel that something that's only a few years old in America can really be very serious. And I guess there's a, I suppose there must be some feeling of sadness about the way in which young people aren't becoming Buddhist in Japan and the way the culture as a whole is going, which is, it's pretty mixed up right now.

[33:39]

But, I mean, I just don't know enough to say. I mean, I know a few people's attitudes. For instance, I know that in Dai Tokuji, teachers feel, we don't care if anybody comes, we're going to practice our way and we'll continue our way and we wouldn't change it for anybody. And if nobody comes, that's not our problem. But others I've met mostly are just worried about how to find a successor for their temple. I mean they're more worried about a family tradition, for instance, Nagasaki Sensei's father's temple. He's a scholar, very good scholar and Buddhist logician and professor of Indian philosophy, Sanskrit and Pali. And he wants to go on with scholarship and doesn't want to take the temple. His brother is doing something else. His brother is, I don't know, maybe priest, head of another temple.

[34:41]

but they don't have anybody to take care of this temple which has been in their family for like 20 some Oshos. Osho means the head of the temple so there's been a succession of 20 some. And they're sad about not being able to continue this tradition more than sad about that people aren't interested in Buddhism or something like that, you know. But because in the village, the people still come to the temple and get some resource from it. Yeah? Would you talk about your attitude in going to Japan compared, say, with the attitude that you understand that Dogen went to China Well, we don't know, of course, exactly why Dogen went to China.

[35:57]

I mean, exactly, except that he had the problem of, if everyone has Buddha nature, you know, why do you have to practice? Traditionally, that's what's said and he went to... I mean, of course, I have various problems about practice, which being in Japan affects. Do you what do you mean specifically like what he was what his relationship to Chinese Buddhism was something like that? Well, it's Just looking at it from a larger point of view, like historical point of view, it's quite a different situation in that Buddhism had been in Japan for several centuries when Dogen went.

[37:10]

And he went and was interested in a specific in his own practice and developing a specific kind of practice. Zen had just started in Japan and the Zen I guess he found there didn't satisfy him and he went to find a way of Zen which was more satisfactory to him. And my own feeling is I don't find it, you know, I really As far as practice goes, I find no reason to go to Japan at all. For me, practice is always just trying to find what's happening with me, moment after moment. And I don't care whether I'm in Japan or here. But I feel some, on the other hand, I feel some involvement with what's happening in America and what's happening here in Zen Center.

[38:23]

And I think that we have to develop some kind of relationship with the Orient of a much more extensive kind than we have now. I think we probably should have more young Japanese priests come over here for short periods of time, three months, six months, a year, something like that, probably six months a year minimum, to learn English and to see what we're doing and to practice with us, partly to be teachers. And I think some of us should go over there. And I think that just the I mean, for me, Buddhism isn't just a sort of zazen, you know, that everything comes into it, culture and politics and economics, etc. And I think that something's happening in our own society which is trying to find some existence in us, and it's in some ways quite similar to what the Orient already has.

[39:25]

And why that is interests me. exactly what the possibilities of other forms of mind are interests me. In other words, what is interesting to me about Japan is seeing that you can have really very basic assumptions about life, time and space, etc., which are different, means that the mind is free, actually. Actually, such that that in itself can become a kind of practice. You know, when you see that you don't have to be caught even at this fundamental level that your mind is free, your consciousness or being or whatever you want to say is free. Yeah? Is it a pleasurable experience to live in a tent? Do you find it enjoyable living there? Well, I think it's possible for it to be enjoyable.

[40:27]

I mean, I knew a great deal about Japan before I went. Tourists seem to enjoy themselves. Businessmen seem to enjoy themselves. Most people involved with the culture, who are there as scholars or people studying one of the traditional arts or crafts or something, have pretty mixed feelings. In some ways it's a pretty difficult place to live. For instance, Negroes find Japan, while they find France, easier to live in than America. Negroes find Japan harder to live in than America. It's not that... I mean, you're treated better... I would suspect that an American person in Japan is treated better than a Japanese person in America is treated. But there's some level of... Well, Japan has been 300 stormy miles from China for a long time.

[41:36]

When you're an outsider, when you're a foreigner, you're really an outsider in a way. In America, you may be mistreated, but somehow you have certain kinds of rights. You have some sort of existence here, even if you're badly treated. In Japan, you may be treated very well, but you have no place in the culture. And it's a very funny feeling, and if you don't know just how to present the right kind of vibes, which put Japanese people at ease, you'll get treated very strangely, like ryokans won't take you in, things like that. I know a lot of people have trouble with that. They know they're empty, and the people just say, I'm sorry, we're full. an in, and it's a different thing than here. They're not discriminating against you, it's just they don't know what to do with you. That's the feeling I get, that it's a situation where we just rather pretend he doesn't exist.

[42:47]

So, there's quite a lot of people I know who live in the traditional culture and are trying I mean they come to my house all the time and there's just nothing but complaints. But most of the people avoid this. Avoid the areas of the culture that are difficult, and I specifically did all the things that are difficult. I mean, I tried to put myself in difficult situations all the time in order to find out, because what I was trying to find out is why so many people, Americans, have gone to Japan and found it too difficult to continue. So, whenever I got wind of a difficulty or sense of difficulty, I rushed right into it, you know, and got myself all mad and angry and things. And the more I could get sort of really irritated, you know, I felt, what's going on? Why am I irritated? And mostly I found that there was some way of looking at things, some way of organizing their sense impressions, which was different from mine in some way which really bothered me at some gut level.

[44:02]

Now I could intellectually say, you know, in fact I have a kind of consulting service in Japan. People having trouble in the culture come to me and I say, it'll be all right, just think of it this way and I send them back, you know, to the convent or to the monastery or wherever. And then it's okay, you know. But still, even though intellectually I have some understanding of it, in my stomach I don't feel so good, you know, sometimes. So I've tried to understand what it is that's bothersome, you know. That's what I spent most of the year doing, trying to find out what's bothersome and why. And I've ended up, every time I tried to do this, I ended up that the basic assumptions that are being made are different. But Japan, what's nice about it, there's several things that are nice. One is being an outsider has a very good side, too, because you're free.

[45:04]

You don't have to follow any rules and everything is forgiven you. And it's a kind of freedom. You feel left out, but it's a kind of freedom. And it's a kind of fallow period, for one. Also, there are many beautiful things. The buildings are quite beautiful. But if you don't have the idea that Japanese buildings are like American buildings, they're much better too. Because when you first go in them, if you're expecting an American building, it's rather surprising because they're often like barns. You come into a famous old temple, everybody tells you it's beautiful, and you get in there, it's just a barn. It's got big beams and a high ceiling and a smoky wall where there's a fire kitchen over in the corner, and it looks just like a barn. But then when you look more, when you get the sense, you see, Japanese people, again, I don't think their buildings are designed from mental visual ideas, they're designed from feeling visual ideas.

[46:05]

Not ideas, but... Their mind is used just the same as ours, but rather than organize their perceptions through their mind, they organize these perceptions that come in through the mind, eyes, and blah, blah, blah. They organize it in their feeling, and so it makes their buildings different. You go into a building and there's more a sense of light, or space, or how it feels to walk across the room, or move in the room, rather than like something that pleases the eye. The sense of the room pleases you, and the temples are that way, and they're marvelous. Old, and the gardens are marvelous, you know. And the people, often particularly the older people, I find that if you're introduced to a Japanese person, they're extremely nice to you and extremely pleasant. In a situation where you get to know somebody, Although their gaijin, gaijin means foreigners, foreigners complain, they spend a great deal of time learning Japanese, and then they get to know Japanese people, and there's nothing to talk about.

[47:14]

Their idea of friendship is different from ours. But what I've found is, what they're giving us as friendship, they're not, as some people think, they're not being mean to us as foreigners. They're giving us the full friendship treatment, and we just don't know how to perceive it. It's more like being together or sharing the weather or something like that, some different feeling. I don't know quite how to explain it. When you get on to that, and you become friends with some people, there's an enormous deep feeling, a kind of much more deep and refined feeling with the average person than you have with the average person here. Does what I'm saying make sense? By feeling, Dick, you mean the scanned out feeling or more like emotional?

[48:32]

Emotional. A wonderful kind of thing which happened is that driving is very wonderful because it... In America, you know, we paint white lines on the road and everybody drives sort of just like that, you know. In Japan, they paint white lines on the road, you know. I guess they're imitating the West, probably. And then they drive like this. And at first it's rather disturbing, you know. You think, my God, you know. I'd worked out a technique in the taxis. Because most people are scared to death in the taxi, they just sit back like this, you know. Sometimes Namu Amida Butsu, Namu Amida Butsu. But I would work out a technique to try to get them to slow down, because you can't quite tell them. Because if you tell them, say something like, slow down, you say, he says, oh, I'm a kamikaze driver.

[49:35]

And he keeps going just as fast, you know. They sort of like scaring foreigners. But they drive that way anyway. And my first, I used to tell them, oh, in America we drive much slower. And I would talk to him in Japanese a little bit about how in America people drive slower. Why do they drive faster here? To see if I could get him to slow down. And if that didn't work, I would start complaining about some other driver doing the same thing. If I'd see a driver doing exactly what he's doing, I'd say, look at that fool. If that didn't work, I can't remember, I did something else. I had some third step. And if that didn't work, I would say, stop! But after a while, you find that actually Again, I mentioned field before, they tend to organize their experience, rather than linearly, in a field, so that they drive with a sense of what's going on on all sides.

[50:50]

And the little kids ride these bicycles, and they're very skillful. And you think, really, I kept hollering at little kids, get out of the way, and everybody would think I was silly. Everything works, and they miss each other by a little. But as soon as you get on to that, it relates to the kanji. When you look at a kanji, like we make the letter A, we take a stick and we take another stick and we prop them together and we put a support, right? and that's the letter A. You could make it into a house, an A-frame or whatever. But the Japanese have kanji which, well, one is like this, and like that, and then out here there's a little line, and here, that's a syllabary called na. And when Americans first make it, they draw a line here, and a line here, and then they connect this, and then they connect this, right? And so it makes another little object. And, of course, you've got to separate the parts, because they have a feeling of an area out of which these things are manifested. And, in fact, it's not even organized on the paper.

[51:52]

When we make the letter A, it's organized by some idea of an A on the paper, and you can make one from this direction, or you can make one, an A, this way, you know. But when you write a Japanese letter, to have it right, you have to sit, you have to put the paper in front of you, you have to hold, you have to be sitting straight, and you have to hold your pencil sort of And there's a kind of gesture. And when you look at the letter, you can tell where the person was at when he wrote it, because it's organized in the person as he's writing it, not on the paper. And this kind of field, and it's also related to their group ego rather than individual ego. The emphasis is much more on group reference point rather than individual reference point. For example, with the Ikku and Kuru, again, come and go. We say a person's gone out on some errands, and they say he's erranding and will come back. And the reference isn't to the person who's out there doing it, the reference is that he's left the group and he's going to come back.

[52:52]

in many little ways you find these references of... the reference point is the group rather than the individual. Well, likewise in the driving, when you get... as soon as I've told people this, they immediately feel more comfortable in the driving, because you then sense this kind of... there's a kind of... you don't worry about the fact that they're not all in lines. I mean, there may be two lanes with five or six cars in them, all side by side, you know. I mean, really, that's true. Well, to get back to the point of the feeling, I was in a taxi in Tokyo and driving along, and he drove quite safely, you know? He drove the Japanese way, but quite safely and differently, and I began a conversation with him. And I thought, this man must be an American or something, or have been in America or something. And particularly I noticed it when he came up to a corner of a street. You know, there's a street this way. And he stopped.

[53:57]

And I had a real sense that he looked to the left and said, ah, it's clear. And he looked to the right and he said, it's clear. And then he drove out, right? And my feeling is Japanese drivers just don't do that. They come up to the corner. And they may look to the right and the left, but primarily they drive out because they feel like it. And they may drive out because they feel like it, because there's nothing coming. And they may drive out because they feel like it, because something's coming, you know. And then everybody feels like getting out of the way, you know. So it's okay, you know, you drive out and everybody goes zzzz. Well, the same situation in America, everyone would be honking and angry. In fact, in those situations, sometimes I've decided to get angry and everybody thinks I'm kooky to get angry, you know. Or Jenny went to a movie theater with Sally on Sunday afternoon. Japanese people work usually six days a week, so Sunday is a holiday. And everybody does, you know, goes out on Sunday.

[55:03]

Well, the movie theater maybe has three or four hundred seats, right? Well, they sell five hundred tickets or six hundred tickets, I don't know. You know, there's no relationship to the number of seats and the tickets. Why, I don't quite know, except it may be related to the fact that tatamis at one time were the seat floor and everybody could squeeze in, you know. Anyway, they sell a lot of tickets and you can't get in, it's packed, you know. And Ginny and Sally finally got in. And they were about to get a seat, right? They could see some seats down here. And there were like three seats available, say, down to the right. And there were like 15 seats. There were 15 seats in this way and only five seats in this way, about, something like that, right? Well, in America, if you were that way, you'd walk down the aisle, and you'd say, there's a guy over there, and he's only got five seats to go in, and I've got 15 seats to go in. I'll let him get them. And you'd look elsewhere, right? Not in Japan, they run. And they were running, both directions, you know, right down the aisle with their umbrellas out. Like that, you know? And they got to the seat, and they both stuck their umbrellas down like that, you know?

[56:06]

And if you did that in America, you know, you'd expect to get punched, maybe, or something like that. But instead they both missed and one guy got it and the other didn't, and then they both started helping each other. You know, get other seats. They're smiling and sort of saying, well let's get that one and that one. So there's this, they permit a great deal more overlap than we do, you know. We have an idea of, in fact they've done some work and they've shown that a person who's violent, a Western person who's violent, has an area out about like this, of which if you cross beyond that, you start to tense up. And the ordinary American or Western person, if you get beyond about here, they start to tense up. Well, I don't think Japanese people have that area. So, we have a sort of thing like, that's public out there and this is private. And it's, for instance, one of the things that's bothersome to American students studying in Japan is that a priest will come up to you and manhandle you in ways.

[57:14]

Like, you'll be standing there and he'll come up and say, your robe should be that way. And you feel, whoa. And you think, my God, what's going on here? But then you look and to the Japanese person, he says, oh, it isn't. Thank you. And it's okay, there's not this area of privacy here that we have. So it's lots of little things like this which make perfect sense in Japan, but to us at first are pretty disturbing. We can't understand exactly what's happening. the emphasis on tradition and little things like straightening your robe. It's all done in ways. Of course, everything is done very quick, too. Japanese people are very quick. One of the funny things that happens is, I guess someone told me that it's polite not to count your change.

[58:16]

So, you're supposed to trust them. And Japanese people are very honest. So, I would go in the bank And I'd say, well, I won't count my change, you know. And the girl counts the money. She picks up a stack of bills. She goes, she says, here. So I'd say, OK. And I'd go outside the minute. One, two. And it would always be right, you know, but a couple of times it was wrong, but most of the time it would always be right. But it's amazing, they take this big stack of bills and they go, zzzz, and it's all counted, you know. That's really startling. And in Zazen, I went to do Zazen, right? So, just like here, you know, the bell rings, bong, I'm rocking back and forth. And I turned around and it was gone.

[59:19]

So I hobbled, you know, down the aisle. And they were way down the hall, you know. And I got in and they were already opening up their Oreo keys and everything. I opened mine up. But really, the bell rings and boom, they're up and they're like that, you know. I decided they really needed the tea ceremony to slow down. This taxi driver in Tokyo, after he did this, you know, and pulled out, and he seemed to do it with an idea, you know, I said to him, have you ever been to America?

[60:26]

You know, you drive just like an American. He said no, but he told me his father was an American professor. and had been in America teaching something or other until just before the boy was born and had come back to Japan when he was in his thirties or something and this boy had been born and he'd been brought up by his father with a lot of background in Western ideas and things like that. But from my thing, he really did think, you know, like he organized what was happening by ideas rather than by, well, he felt like doing it. And part of this is, I think, we have a mind culture, they have a more mind-body culture. And part of this body facility, while it might be that, I mean, I would assume that if a person has a little different color skin, it's possible their physiology and mind is slightly different maybe. But I would suspect the explanation is more that in a mind-body culture, The body has a wisdom.

[61:27]

I mean, you even see it in your Oryokis. You don't exactly remember how to tie the knot. You put your hand out and you stick it under your fingers and then pull. Or when you take the Kesa off, Suzuki, you know the Kesa you tie around you? I mean, it's really hard to fold up if you don't do it with your body. I mean, if you just sort of fold it down, I can't never figure out quite how it goes. But, you know, you untie it and then you pull it to your head and then you turn the corners and then you do something else and you, you know, and then it's all folded, you know. But that kind of thing is typical in a more body culture. where there's, like they even say, nirvana, you touch nirvana with your body. And likewise, you can ask a Japanese person a kanji, and they'll say, that one. But I would guess that their body, their hand knows all the kanji they know, and their mind knows sort of less, you know.

[62:34]

It's like I found the same thing to be true last year when I was very busy, and I had to know many phone numbers. I was in contact with, maybe, I don't know, nearly a thousand people, and I knew phone numbers for a large percentage of them, including office phones numbers and things. And often I didn't know the phone numbers in my head, but in my hand I could dial it, but I couldn't remember the number. But I could pick up the phone and say, Peter Schneider, and my finger would dial the right number, you know. But that kind of knowledge is more difficult. He didn't either. He lived at Tassajara. 408 plus 084 plus 181, isn't it? I'm supposed to end in five minutes, I think. So, any other questions?

[63:35]

She said the language organizes concepts differently than English does. That's pretty complicated, without getting into linguistics, to really answer satisfactorily. But I'll say that my impression of Japanese... I don't know how a Japanese person exactly feels about these things, but English tends to be rather specific, you know, and each word tends to have a rather isolated, abstract meaning. And in Japan, there's more of a feeling of each kanji, each character, having a sort of an association, a matrix of meanings, of which there's a kind of... I sort of sense a little circle around the kanji, and then another little circle around it, and another little circle, and there'll be some linking in between, which tell you what part, where the connection is.

[65:09]

It's a kind of linking of matrices, rather than linking of specific abstract ideas. It is rather different. You had a question? Somebody back there did. Yeah, I think that one of the things young people in America are learning through maybe drugs is more of that, you know, body-mind feeling. Because I know that I was really, and still am to a great extent, caught by my When you were? I can see that long hair. But I was really into music, really into hip hop, and kind of into, I mean, just really flabbergasted by the things you began to see what your body could do and how you could arrange the world, I mean, in more of a sense.

[66:12]

I was wondering if the reverse is happening in Japan. I mean, whereas some of us, are getting more of a body-mind thing, whether the Japanese who maybe began with this, whether they are now getting themselves into a, you know, with all the Western trappings that they've been adopting, whether this is making any difference in their consciousness, whether they are beginning to become more just-mind-oriented or idea-oriented. I thought about this a lot myself and it's very difficult for me to tell. I don't know any Japanese people well enough, young people, to find out. Like my own teacher, Nagasaki Sensei, is still, though he's quite a liberated Japanese man, knows English very well, etc. He's completely traditional. His thinking and feeling and everything is completely traditional. Young kids talk a lot about individuality.

[67:16]

And they, but in their, in the way they, in their demonstrations in the university uprisings and things like that, it's the most group expression of individuality I've ever seen. I mean, it seems about as little individual as I, as anything I've, I mean, you know, like it doesn't look individual at all. But I suppose that our emphasis at tribal get-together, et cetera, is essentially still pretty individual. But there is something going on, you know. I use a lot of appliances with push button, making things automatic. I know they manufacture a great many in the United States. Well, electronic stuff. Other things that are very well made. Yeah, mostly, well, cameras and electronics are about all I can think of.

[68:20]

Fans, a few other, but for the most part, like their washing machines and ordinary stuff like that are about 1940s American stuff. On the whole, the ordinary household technology is 20 years or so behind ours. But it's adequate, I mean, this... Well, I think you have to require more Well, I understand what you're driving at, but I can't answer it quite in that context. I can say, yes, I think Japanese people do do things in ways which involve their bodies more than we do. There's a kind of, they do a lot, well this is an example, but it gets, you see this stuff shifts rapidly from body into group, you know.

[69:25]

And the way the washing is done and shopping is done with other people and the way they do it, like they go shopping every day practically. And they buy little tiny things of sugar and butter and the next day they go a little. And to us who are used to shopping once or twice a week, you know. once a week or every two weeks rather. It seems rather funny, but then you see that this shopping and this activity is a way of the only time they see each other because they don't visit much in each other's houses. But I don't think drugs are the primary factor, actually myself, in here. I feel that there's some basic shift in consciousness occurring. Because the drugs have been around a long time, and we started using them at a certain point. And this basic shift in consciousness is what leads to the use in drugs, and our own shift, I think, to a mind-body culture. I think we're in a transition to a mind-body culture now. Now, I can't really tell what's going on in Japan.

[70:27]

I sometimes say they have a case of disrupted rhythm. But rhythm is a much more important factor in Japanese culture. And now there's a new rhythm, you know. I mean, like, these robes you wear have a kind of rhythm. I mean, the cloth has a certain integrity of its own which you don't disturb. It just hangs down, you know. And then when you move, there's a kind of... of rhythm which occurs. I mean, you have to move in relationship to the cloth, right? And also, according to status and things like that, I mean, there's a different, and what you're doing, the robes become more and more long or various, so that they change your rhythm. I mean, the clothes have rhythm designed into them, which our clothes don't. But rhythm as a factor in pace is a very important part of monastic life, and I would say Japanese life. There's a sense of rhythm and pacing things, which we don't have nearly as clarified.

[71:32]

And now, with younger people wearing more cut clothes, and with the cars in this whole speeded-up city, there's a something going on which is, at present, not settled enough for me to perceive, and I also don't know enough Japanese to really talk to people to tell. Let me make one comment about the getting free from mental things. There's a difference, of course, between concepts and naming. Like when you look at the ocean and you name it, Like, that's a wave. That's just really naming. That's not the same as really conceptual thinking. And everybody has that problem, to get free from names, naming. So for us, both naming is a problem, like getting free of naming, but getting free from underlying conceptual patterns. on a more basic level, like just the way the information is sorted that's coming from that look of the ocean, is something else again.

[72:46]

One other aspect that's a little difficult is in Japan things are very vague, I mean really vague, I mean it's difficult sometimes to get people to specify exactly about things, partly because I think they just assume you should know about them. And if anybody can see, for instance, in the monasteries, everybody seems to have little, at least in Rinzai monasteries, has little heaters they stick inside their robes, you know. And they put charcoal in them, you know. And they light the charcoal, and then they stick them inside their robes, you know, and that sort of gives them a little warmth there. And now they use some chemical that they put in. Well, as far as I can tell, everybody uses them. But no one will admit it, and if you asked about it, you'd be told no. But you can smell the stuff, you know, and you can go in any of the Johns and they're all the equipment for lighting it, you know, etc. So, you know, like, if you went to the Roshi and you said, can I use a heater?

[73:52]

And he said no, he'd assume you were absolutely nitwit to not perceive that everybody was using them, you know. At least, I don't know exactly. I can't tell exactly what's going on, but something's going on, Mr. Jones. Or I went to a store to buy a kaban. All Japanese kids, when they go to school, wear these little backpacks, you know, on their back, of leather, that you carry all your books in to school, and then you carry them all back home. Now, why you carry them all to school and all back home and don't leave them at school, I don't quite know, unless it's a posture thing. But they do, anyway. And I went to buy one, right? And all the little boys wear black and all the little girls wear red. Well, I talked to this man maybe 10 minutes trying to get him to tell me whether to buy a red one or a black one. And he said, well, you can buy either one you want. And I kept saying, but I think little girls wear one of the, which, well, it doesn't make any difference.

[74:53]

Whichever one you'd like. I couldn't get him to be specific. I mean, to me, this is absolutely incredible that he just wouldn't say, buy the red one. You know? But Sally finally called me to the side and said, I think I've seen little girls wear red, so we bought a red one. And there have been other things which I've noticed, like things that occur in movies or comic books, certain themes, clearly apparent themes. And I've asked Japanese people about them, and they just, I've never heard of it. And to give you an idea of how vague things can be, Mrs. Nakamura, the woman who lives with us, was calling Nagasaki sensei, my teacher, who was near Nagata, asking him for the address over the phone. And they were discussing the address, and one of the things in the address was ishi, I-S-H-I, right? And she said to him, in Japanese, which ishi do you mean? Do you mean the one that's the same as the English word stone?

[75:56]

Now, I found that incredible that she had to use a stone. She used the English word stone. It came out, you know, Japanese, blah, blah, blah, and then stone, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I thought about that for a while. I mean, it was so vague, you know, what the address was that she had to specify using a word outside her own language to figure out which kanji it was. Well, you get in situations where, to us, the vagueness is absolutely incredible, and you think they're putting you on, you know, you think something's, you can't believe it's so vague, but it's just vague, you know. And partly, I think it's the way of thinking and the way of feeling, but partly it's that a great deal is you're just expected to know. I mean, you're expected to be intuitive about and just know. You're not supposed to have to have everything spelled out. A marvelous thing, but to show the difference, you know, With kids, some reporter asked Arlo Guthrie, this was in a magazine, what do you talk about? He said something like, well, if you think we talk about the weather, no, we just look out the window.

[77:05]

I don't talk about the weather, I just look out the window. Well, that's much more sort of, like why talk about the weather? You can look out the window. Of course, Japanese people talk about the weather a great deal. There is something different about this vagueness and other things, which when you're in a monastery, you get pretty confused. People come talk to me, they say, they told me this, they told me that, and everyone was doing the other thing, and I couldn't figure it out. But one gets on to it. One last thing. Since I mentioned the robes and tradition, I'm trying to find out you know, as much as I can and to understand as receptively as I can the Buddhist tradition in Japan. But I feel, for instance, about robes as just an example, that

[78:07]

The traditional robes originally were, they took the traditional peasant dress, as far as I know, and then they tied Buddha's robe around it. And then, as priests had position and status, the robes became fancier and things like that. But the original sandals were the traditional sandals, like the original diet was the diet of the ordinary person. And it seems to me in diet, for instance, there's no reason for the monasteries to stick to a Kamakura peasant diet today. And there's no reason for us to adopt Japanese sort of silk and fancy robes, which come out of the culture, when we should probably do what they did originally, is look around for the most ordinary dress, which would be dungarees or something like that, and tie Buddha's robe around us. You know, I don't know, I don't know exactly what Suzuki Roshi feels, or I found the practice of wearing robes quite interesting.

[79:09]

But I think in these areas, we want to follow Buddhist tradition, but it's like, do we say, om makula sai svaha, or do we say, om makula sai sovaka? Or do we find our own mantra, you know? I don't know, but somewhere in there we have to find out what to do. Thank you very much.

[79:37]

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