But really to know, as I said I think earlier in the session, really to know, to enter that place where you're completely alone, is exactly the door to knowing other people. Because it's there where you know, it's at that point at which you know other people. To know another person's aloneness is to know them. There that you can meet. So we, one thing you, we go through if we practice is that dreadful sometimes, usually dreadful awakening to how completely alone we are. Nobody can help us, nobody can understand us. It's all up to us and our life itself is completely our responsibility, completely generated by us, completely just white sound until you generate it. That's the real great yes or great no. To know, to find that out and start generating. Instead of saying, whoops, that was a little too much, I'll take another pill.

[01:27]

Yeah. When you say to be vigilant and never just one sound, sometimes there's a real joy in seeing it and in practicing it. And then some thought, negative thought, and going, I can't really do it. I want to work. That we can't really do it? Well, it's just one of those things, you know. It's like there can be a very beautiful tree. There's that beautiful redwood tree, redwood type tree growing behind my cabin, struggling every year to survive. Its roots must go down pretty deep.

[02:43]

And I don't know what it will become. And it's surviving quite well in a climate where it doesn't have enough water in the air and things. And yet, in some foolish moment, I could, within a minute, cut it down with an axe. We can do things like that. And we don't know what we've done. But, you know, the problem is when you think I can't do it. We know that I is not very real, so forget about it. Buddha can do it. So, yay team!

[03:48]

So you get all the bodhisattvas and buddhas on your side? Yeah? I didn't even know the second bowl was the Dharma bowl. Is that true? Do you know that? What have you been reading? Did you think that up? That's pretty good. Please continue. Who is the person who is doing the book?

[05:14]

I don't know. This is your ceremony. You have to explain it to me. Buddha bowl, because it originally was a skull, it represents a head, the main bowl. Other bowls are just convenience. In any way, we don't need so much symbolism. Symbolism is okay if you have a way to act with it, but it's just something to help us. We wouldn't get too involved in it. Yes? Someone over here? There is meeting without the need for confirmation, but there is no meeting without confirmation.

[06:38]

A vehicle? Did I say that? Maybe. I guess you could say, I don't think I said that, but you could say the sky of spring is a vehicle. Carrying. carrying delusion and enlightenment, making everything possible. About the what? The food?

[09:03]

We say the first bite is for... Yeah, it's not for the foods, it's for something else. Why everything is... Our chant, we venerate the three treasures and are thankful for this meal, the work of other people and the suffering of other forms of life, is about exactly the same as Harry Roberts'. And the Bodhisattvas that we chant, that's the same too.

[10:08]

Yeah, we chant the ten names of Buddha, and that's the same too, as we venerate the three treasures and are thankful for this meal, the work of other people. It may be obstructing to you, but it's still the same. Yes, go ahead. The one that was published in Look? Yeah, I think that's it. That poem is also very Buddhist of Gary's, influenced by Buddhism. Well, you don't maybe understand the ten names of Buddha. Do you want to understand the ten names of Buddha? There's a difference between symbolism and

[11:38]

Oh, I don't know. The meal chant, the meal, the way we do the orioke is based maybe on the five ranks of tozan, the mutual interpenetration and the offering of food and the touching of your bowl to the wastewater bucket. It's different from symbolism. It's not symbolic. It's acting out something in various realms. Symbolism is different. Anyway, but I don't feel like going into it right now. It's rather a whole different type of discussion. And it's from Shashu position, not from here. Some people do it here, even though I remind them, they still do it from here. When you first came, did Gassho feel appropriate?

[13:20]

Don't worry about it, just do it. All these things have some, usually there's some basis, sometimes they get a little disconnected. But usually it's, for instance, on the kakimonos, you know, the hanging scrolls, they used to be tied from the top by these two strands that came down. And now they're no longer tied, and the better scrolls have the strings hanging down, but they don't use them. You roll up and then you fold them and they hang down. The less good scrolls have them as a design, but it's not a symbol. It's more like an appendix, you know, your appendix you have. You don't use your cow's stomach anymore, but you still have it. Your appendix isn't a symbol of the stomach. And a lot of the things we do, like this, actually are the remnant of some practice related to the hara or to the chakras.

[14:48]

And many, many things we do you don't understand until certain parts of your body are awakened. Buddhism is very deep and you cannot understand it in one lifetime. But if you throw your lot in with all the Bodhisattvas, all together, everyone all at once can understand Buddhism completely. And we always are manifesting it. Yes. Who what? Coming to Zen Center. Yeah. Well, you suspect that people in Zen Center... No, I don't suspect anything. I think I overheard Rick Levine... There was a woman out east... There's no question here.

[16:17]

This is the joy of the Dharma. It's like a bowling alley in Iceland. I can't hear you. Please keep quiet. I hope so. I've never speculated about previous lives. Not even about this life. Yeah, I don't know. There are certain seer types you go to and they'll tell you you were an abbot of a Tibetan monastery. That's usually what they'll tell you. Maybe it's true, but the trouble, I'd recommend none of you go to Sears, all right? Because you try to make the shoe fit so completely that you're pinched the rest of your life. You lose some flexibility by thinking you know something about yourself.

[17:49]

Yeah, I don't know what Rick was referring to. Mrs. Carlson. Mrs. Carlson? I don't know how he'd know this story if that's what he was referring to. Mrs. Carlson, who was, of course, Chester Carlson's husband. Well, she is sort of the boss. Anyway, she's... Chester Carlson is the person who mainly gave us the money to buy Tassajara. Maybe $200,000 altogether. Anyway, she's a very interesting woman and she's interested in other lives and things like that. Very interested in reincarnation and has financed most of the reincarnation research. And one time I was telling her a story.

[19:05]

in which I, as a kid, had a little... I shouldn't tell you this story. I've told you this story. My parents had this little Buddha, which I didn't know what it was, and it used to sit on my mantelpiece. my family's mantel. It may have come from China or some place because my great-uncle was a clipper ship captain. He had six or seven clipper ships. And in succession, not all at once. And he used to go back and forth to China. And so we had various things from China and Japan when I was a kid in our house. We had this little Buddha, and my mother would tell me the name was Buddha, and I somehow couldn't remember the name. So I found on an old map this mysterious-looking city called Krakow. So I called this guy Krakow. And I... I don't know why I did it. I can't explain it. It's the previous life, I guess. I slept in the basement in this cracked house. And we had this...

[20:32]

bunk beds with a ladder and I put a candle on one and I'm a completely an atheist, you know, when I was a kid anyway, I guess I am now too. And I used to do things like go into the Catholic Church with my Catholic friends and say, strike me down, something like that. They'd all weep or get mad at me or something. But I wanted to see what was what, you know. I was a little stupid, but anyway. But the same time I got this darn little Buddha and I put him on the pamphlet and all the kids would come in at one o'clock every during the day in the summer, and we'd all get in a line, we'd go around in a circle going, bow to Krakow, bow to Krakow. I was in fifth, sixth, let's see, I was in sixth grade. I don't know if that makes you twelve. Why did that mean? Anyway, Mrs. Carlson somehow,

[21:47]

I heard this story and thought that this is proof of previous lives as a Buddhist or something. But Suzuki Yoshi said that Zen Center, he needed, he was going to be in this country such a short time, he needed people who were already prepared. He wasn't talking about previous lives, he was talking about some developed awareness some confrontation with real choice early in life. And I think some are the whole, there are lots of themes in our civilization, Western civilization, which are coming some undermined of our culture, or under culture, which is coming to the surface now. which precedes LSD and all those things, which made us interested in such chemicals, actually, which comes out, too, as the transcendentalists Thoreau and Emerson think, and comes out in lots of... you can see it in lots of contemporary poetry, Olson, other people, and you can see it earlier, Whitman, and this is a kind of preparation for us.

[23:10]

So Rick may have been referring to that, too. But now Zen Center is... I think Zen Center can now... Maybe any person can come. They don't have to be a Buddhist previously or have some preparation previously. Hi Milton. Hi.

[24:28]

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