As far as I know, what they say or the idea is that you sort of apologize for cutting open Mother Earth, you know, and putting a building in it. Well, you see it in Japan done for every little ticky-tacky house and every, you know, it's just that the feeling that you might have for it is lost. And you also, many of the things which seem very important to us, again referring to last night a bit, the group and ecological way of thinking, you see frozen in Japan, which in a way, the group ego thing is as bad as our individual ego situation. I think the best way to go to the Orient, actually, for any of you who may be planning to, is to go as a tourist, a kind of spiritual tourist. And you don't have a specific plan, but you can even get tourist visas, it's the easiest way to go to Japan. You can get them renewed three or four times fairly easily, and then you can also apply

[01:03]

for longer visas by taking a boat, which is quite cheap to Korea, and then you reapply from Korea and come back, though that can be a hassle. But it's not more of a hassle than trying to get that kind of visa here in America, probably maybe less. So if you go, then you can wander around and look at Japan as much as you want, teach a little English and support yourself. And if you find a place you really like, you can stay, and if you don't, then you can go on to India or some other place. Usually the people who come, even if they are determined to study Buddhism, they end up going to India or some other place. So many people have come through and knock on my door and they say, I want information about where to study Buddhism, it's been my lifelong, etc. And I talk with them about an hour or two hours or a day, and tell them all the temples, etc. And off they go, and then I hear a month later they're in India, or they're in Turkey or someplace. So I think in the end, the best way to go is to just go like that.

[02:04]

If you're a very socially aware person, social problems, things like that, there are a lot of things in Japan that will bother you. They have no idea of integration of other races, at least we have the idea. I mean, Koreans who have been living in Japan for several generations are still immigrants, and it's very difficult to become a Japanese citizen, nearly impossible. And for the most part, the Japanese people I talk to, even well-educated, cultivated people, they just feel, well, the Koreans cause all the kidnappings and accidents and murders and things like that. And you know that's not true, but that's just the way they feel. And I don't think it's something I'm trying to put the Japanese down, it's just that they've

[03:09]

lived 300 stormy miles from China for a long time, and they've been one kind of big family. And the whole idea of this place and the whole thinking and feeling of it with Shintoism is the Japanese people are ... it's not different from the land, it's not different from the trees and the hills, and the idea of foreigners is just really quite strange. And so you're really a foreigner in a sense that you're not probably anyplace else in the world. You're called ... a lot of us say the first word little children learn is gaijin, which means outsider, because you walk along, little children, gaijin, gaijin, foreigner, foreigner. And you get quite used to it, and if you're not bothered by it, you can turn it into a kind of ... you can look back and say nakajin, nakajin, which means insider, insider. And you can sort of fool about it, and it's okay, no problem, but some people get very

[04:11]

uptight about it, because you're all ... you have a feeling of always being left out. But on the other hand, there's quite a nice feeling of being an outsider, because you can do anything you want. I mean, you know, like you can ... anything you do is okay, because you're an outsider, and he's just a foreigner, and he doesn't know, you know. It's okay, there's a kind of freedom there. One of the things, again, that I think you should know if you're going and you're trying to do something like study Buddhism, is Japan looks very rigid and uptight and middle-class and bourgeois and all those things, and to some extent it is. People I know who go to Singapore and other countries find a much more relaxed feeling. But ... and also the naturalness and freedom that Zen talks about is within the Japanese cultural situation, which is very structured and rigid, and ... but it's not as rigid

[05:17]

as it looks. I mean, like Lama Govinda came through, and he found it the most rigid, uncomfortable-looking Buddhism he'd ever seen in the world, and he's been in most Buddhist countries, and he was ... it took me quite a lot of time to get through to him about the value of the kind of sitting we do and the look of it, everyone doing it together, because he was very displeased in lots of ways with the way Zen Mountain Center looked and the way Japanese Buddhism as a whole looked. He felt somewhat better after he left, he wrote me a long letter. But if you expect some individual kind of feeling of, like, finding your own way, in the sense that we mean that, it's just not there, and it really looks ... you know, the most commonly used word is militaristic, that Japan, the whole Japanese culture looks militaristic to us. And ... but, you know, like, I'm pretty down on our public school system, which seems pretty

[06:25]

bad to me, and in fact, for our daughter, we've been involved in trying to figure out how to set up a school with friends, which we've partly accomplished. And in Japan, when we first got there, I was pretty worried about our daughter going to the Japanese school system, because I knew that at ten o'clock on a Wednesday morning, every teacher of seven-year-olds is on the top of page fifty, in the entire nation. And there's a kind of ... you know, the school board lays it down. There's one class that I know of in the whole school system, which is left up to the teacher, and there's criticism of it all the time in the newspapers, because they don't like it being left up to the teacher. They'd rather a central school board plan it. And so we were pretty worried about, you know, like, this regimentation. But when our daughter actually goes to the school, it's a very good school system, and very interesting school system. So it looks very rigid, but in actual practice, it's got all kinds of things that aren't visible

[07:30]

to us, which make it quite flexible and workable and okay. And Sally, that's my daughter's name, comes back from first grade, and she's learning harmonics and all kinds of things she wouldn't in a first grade year. And quite a good, and very good feeling, very good relationship between the teacher and the students, and a good situation with the other students. So better than our public school system, I'd say. So I mean, the number of people I've spoken to who've been in Japan, too, and been in monasteries, which I haven't done yet, they say, well, wait till you get to the monasteries there. It's really rough. You know, you don't know what it's like yet. And I don't think that's going to be my experience. I think my, I know just about, I know the menu, as I said, very well, and I've spent the last, about eight years working on the menu in America, and this last year working on the appetizer in Japan. And I think that the main course of cultural, you know, being right in the situation and

[08:36]

having to live it, I will actually find that being it is quite a different kind of experience. And I think that I'll find, like my daughter does, that all in all, it works very well. Works best if you're Japanese, but I'm not. But Buddhism is one of the few areas in the traditional culture in which outsiders can come in and participate. In most areas, except business, which is a kind of 50-50 thing, you, foreigners in Japan just never really see the traditional culture, the traditional life. In general, I don't think the Japanese in the monasteries have any idea of how repressive it does seem to us. I know Susan Sontag went to Japan, to Vietnam, and wrote a book on North Vietnam and South

[09:36]

Vietnam, a book and an essay. I haven't seen the books, but I saw several reviews of it. And she came to a number of the same kind of conclusions I did. And here in the review, it says here, for the Vietnamese, the goal is not so much to express the individuality of the ego as to arrive at a harmonious relationship with others. Truth is not blah, blah, blah. This is the kind of thing I talked about last night, which anybody who knows much about Japan knows. But we assume that situations are there for us to express individuality. And in Japan, there just isn't that assumption. And so I think in many ways it's far more difficult for us to go through the process of giving up, and it's a different kind of giving up than for them. And we've watched children being brought up in Japan, and what struck us with the way

[10:48]

children were brought up is, in America, if a child is doing something wrong or you don't want it to do, you say no. And if it's doing something that's okay, you say yes, right? Well, the impression I get from listening to the neighbors and talking with several Japanese people I know who speak English, who have children, is that it seems very indulgent by our standards. Until the child's about six or I don't know what year it is with a boy, it changes to being quite tough. Anything the child seems to want is given to the child. They get more candy and this and that than we would ever give a child. But, and they don't seem to get no's. You know, if it's something the mother doesn't want the child to do, the child isn't told no, just ignored.

[11:49]

And tantrums may go on, you know, like all day long I'll hear a kid screaming and screaming and hollering and stamping, and most American mothers I know would say, you'd just better shut up, you know, or keep quiet or stop or something. But in Japan, it just seems to go on and on until a kid just gets absolutely exhausted and says, whatever I thought I wanted must not exist. And I think they get this idea that, you know, like culturally unacceptable goals don't exist, you know. So in monasteries, if you're trying to, if you have the nerve to criticize the system or suggest anything, you generally, you don't ever get through to the level of a rejection because what you're saying doesn't exist. I mean, the possibility doesn't even exist, I think. There's enormous, very, very little criticism of the culture. So it's really hard to push to the point where the person will recognize your demands and

[12:55]

then say no. And even then, if they recognize your demands, you usually get a yes, which means no. It's kind of complicated. I talked a little bit last night about this area of privacy buffer we have. I'm trying to give you some examples of what it's like to live in, try to live in the traditional culture. And, again, I find foreigners, Americans who live in Tokyo, mostly don't have these problems. I find foreigners who live in Kyoto and in traditional situations, all they do is complain about these problems. You know, they've discovered that, well, not really, I mean, it's been obvious, if you think about it, I think, anyway, a violent person has a sort of area like this around him, and if you go beyond that buffer, that airlock, the violent person begins to tense

[13:57]

up as you get into their area. Well, all of us have an area in here somewhere, a sort of private area, which is our private thing, and that's the public out there. But in Japan, they don't seem to have that. You know, it's right up, you know, the culture just penetrates, you know. And so there's a lot of touching and handling and straightening your robes and things like that, which is very startling to us. And the monasteries, you're pushed, seem to be, what looks to us like pushed around in ways which to the Japanese person isn't being pushed around at all. There's much less bother about that kind of thing and much more forgiveness of overlap. Again, I think that there has to be, if you're a member of a group and there's no identity and existence outside groups, that's too simple to say that that's totally true, but the emphasis is far in that direction, then it's a very serious thing to push somebody out of a group. And so they don't. And you can, there's a lot, once you realize that, that they don't follow rules the way

[15:02]

we do. For instance, we have rules and we think it's a very special thing that he did for the research at the hospital. He was Dr. D.T. Suzuki's physician and he, at the U.S. Army Hospital he was at, needed this kind of thing. So he called the biggest hospital in Tokyo and asked for these things. And for a year and two or three months he was told that they were on their way. And all this time he could have written to America and asked for them and got them in a matter of a month. And finally, he talked to a young doctor who knew English and had been trained in America and this doctor said, listen, you better wise up because they don't have them. They don't even have the machine and they're not going to admit it. Because it would be embarrassing to admit their hospital doesn't have this modern equipment or something, you know? It wasn't clear why exactly, but for a year and a half, his year and a fourth, his research

[16:06]

was hung up. It was pretty amazing. The men and, well, let's see, there's, I think I have a few more things I could say, something about men and women and the work situation and the means of arriving at decisions, consensus. And one thing is you don't challenge authority, again in ways which are extraordinary to us. For instance, revenues in even high class restaurants, the best hotel in Kyoto, have incredible mistakes on them. I mean, just, I mean, smashed potatoes is spelled like, I don't know what, you know, you hardly can figure it out sometimes. And the Expo 70, you know, book for announcing everything, all kinds of English errors in

[17:15]

it. Well, it just doesn't happen in this country. You'd get a French person to check the French or you get a Japanese person to check the Japanese. But I asked many people, why does this happen with the menus? And they figured that what happens is they ask, really, a Japanese professor of English to write the menu. And once he's written it, you don't criticize what he's done. They may even know it was a mistake, but you don't criticize it. And another example of that same thing is one of the few times Baraka Mura-san, this woman who lives upstairs, has been angry with us, is that I tried to talk to the plumber who was coming to fix our barrel about what to do. And she got quite mad at me and she said, who are you to question the authority of the

[18:16]

plumber? Don't you think the plumber knows his business, just let him do it. Well, he did it wrong, you know, but you don't question it the way we're used to questioning, you know. Well, I don't know, it works pretty well, you know. So, the real question is, of course, how, what are the ideal conditions for practicing Buddhism, for attaining enlightenment? Is it Japan, or is it here, or is it anywhere, or does it make any difference? Okay, that's, I think I'm done, however, some questions. Yeah? Well, I made a remark about inebriation.

[19:33]

This is, I haven't really, one reason I didn't go into it, because I haven't thought about and looked for examples thoroughly. But just on the level of being, of inebriation, in the simple sense of being drunk, people seem to get drunk much easier than we do, and quite quickly, and they don't get very drunk. Sake, one or two cups of sake, which is a mild kind of wine, really, just one or two, and they're flushed, and they're singing, and they walk to the street, and it's marvelous, you know. It's really quite beautiful, because we walk along, we pull out an arm, and he's sort of wrapped around tight, swinging swallows, and having a really good time. They don't, just don't drink hard liquor the way we do. What I was thinking of more is that our religion, and rich things, tends to aim at doing for

[20:37]

other reasons, you know, helping other people, that kind of thing. And the religion has this argument of getting high, or getting a blowout, and that seems to me to be an individual society, which is more individual than anything, where there are more individuals. The tendency is to go across that, to break through that, that side vertically, or I mean horizontally. And in a society which is group oriented, there's a tendency to get above the group, and there's quite a lot of resistance on having a higher experience of knowledge, and words which we don't have, which we don't have the ideas even for. Okay? You know, can you...

[21:39]

A little lower. The best places are right here. They're right here. Well, I'll keep that in mind. You know, I don't know if there's an answer, or I can even make any sensible suggestions about it, but I'll try, before I finish. I'll remember your question at the last moment. Yeah. Yes, you may. Do you prefer to go to Japan, or the Philippines?

[22:41]

Well, I mean, I'm studying, and I've been talking about all this, and I still think it's worthwhile to study then, or I think it's worthwhile to go to Japan. I'm going to go to Japan in a few weeks. Well, I love him. Of course, what is it? What? Well, I'm trying to get you to have difficulty, because if you don't have difficulty, you really get fooled by that when you go to Japan. You see a regimentation, and you think, oh, my God, you know, if I can learn to be looking more closely at regimentation than seeing something else. What I'm trying to do here is to increase the survival rate to be able to study any

[23:51]

other aspect of the traditional culture. Yes, more than just Japanese culture, Indian culture, American culture. Well, I would say that from a point of view of practice, it's based on a presumption, which I think is truly true. If you take some mental activity, you're limited by that mental activity. If you take some physical activity, you're limited by that physical activity. I mean, like if you're running for a bus, you can solve a character so easily.

[24:52]

Or if you're in a situation subject to physical activity, you're sort of limited partly by that physical activity. So, the idea is that when I become as unlimited and as free as possible, well, when I become as unlimited and as free as possible, maybe it's still possible. Well, it depends on what I'm doing. This, what I'm trying to do, it seems to be the best way to become, to achieve that kind of willingness. Well, I'm trying to do that.

[25:54]

I'm going to be pretty good at doing it. I'm going to be attentive. I'm going to stay well in a less alert position than many of the women who already do it. I'm going to be attentive to a certain amount of their questioning. I'm going to maintain this approach. I'm going to be quick to read out some of their questions, which are kind of a lot of important questions, because for so many of you, I'm a Buddhist. Well, I know that a certain kind of reading is important, and you can't do the reading if you're a Buddhist. You're better off if you're a religious. You're better off if you're a friend. You're better off if you're a friend. Well, I'll interrupt you. I'm now going to interrupt you.

[26:56]

I'm going to interrupt you. I'm going to give you lots to work through.

[27:01]

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