We're not going to chant to start the lecture, right? I'll just bow. We don't have that chant, right? Sometimes, you know, there's a chant that we do before the lecture, but if we don't have it for everyone to read, then we will not do it. I will just bow and say, Guten Abend, Good Evening, and we'll go from there. I'm not sure how well you understand English, again, so we'll see what happens. Maybe it will be fun anyway. If you want to have some translation, you need to let us know, me or Anna, someone,

[01:06]

because there's at least two people here who have helped before translating some. Regina and Albrecht, didn't you do it last year, so if you want, they will sit up here and repeat what you think. It's not necessary. Okay, well, we'll try it. Okay, well, let's just see what happens. Okay, there's something, and then, all right. Well, here we are.

[02:13]

We've survived one day, if you call this surviving. Yes. It looks good. Vertical. And I had my ears cleaned in Bischofshofen, so now I can hear, which may not be a good thing. Let's see. That does remind me, though, that it seemed, I don't know, but it seemed to me, and maybe it's just my newly cleaned ears, but it seemed to me that before dinner and after dinner, there was talking in the area out here, and I'm really encouraging you not to talk during

[03:23]

this issue, so I hope we can be more careful about that. I don't know what to do about it. I'd like to encourage not talking, but I'm not going to, and maybe I should come around with my stick and hit people who are talking, but then, I don't know, maybe there is a good reason for it, although sometimes Suzuki Roshi hit people even without good reason. One time I remember someone leaned back to see the clock, because he was supposed to get up before the end of the period to hit the bell. Suzuki Roshi jumped up and hit him. Don't look at the clock. But he was supposed to. It was his job. Anyway, we'll see what happens.

[04:26]

The problem about talking, for the people talking, that's your business. If you want to be talking, okay, but then other people have to hear you, and then they are tempted to talk to answer you if you're talking to them. Then they will start talking back. So the problem is that other people who might not want to talk then are in the middle of talking, and you do have a different experience of following your awareness when you're not talking. I'm not always so good myself, so don't look at me as an example. Well, I'll do the best I can. But sometimes I forget and people say, Ed, it's a shame we're not talking now. Oh, I forget.

[05:27]

I'm not as serious as I used to be. But anyway, I want to encourage you not to talk. It's one thing if you're by yourself someplace away from others and they can't hear you, and there's a couple of you, then that's your business because it's just you two. But if you're talking where others hear you, then they start thinking about it and listening and then sometimes talking, and we lose the concentration, the focus, the attention that we could have. So this is up to all of us to maintain the spirit or attitude, focus of this issue. So let's do the best we can. Or maybe better. Tonight, I forgot that we started at 7.40.

[06:49]

I got here at 7.30. I was 10 minutes early. I wondered where you were. But I realized pretty quickly I must be early. So I was sitting here waiting for the time and then I started various things were occurring to me, thinking. And I was realizing that many of the people that I started sitting with 44 years ago, many of those people are dead now. They're no longer here. Many of my teachers have died. Suzuki Roshi, Kadagiri Roshi, Kobinchino, and my friends, Phillip Wilson, Nils Holm,

[07:59]

Maggie Krash, many, many students were not here. And I was realizing that each of us, you know, is on our own path. Zen Master Dogen, you know, says the first thing when you study Buddhism is to believe that your life is the path. There's not some other path. That your life, you're already on the path.

[09:07]

Even when, you know, you thought, oh, I won't bow. I won't meditate. You were on the path. You were on your path. And now this is your path to be here. And next week you'll find out what is your path. And we create the path by living it. And this also means, Dogen says, your life is already on the path. There are no mistakes. There's no wrong thinking. There's no upside down. So all the mistakes or difficulties that you have in your life or in seishin are part of the path. You might think that your path would be more beautiful and certainly easier

[10:19]

if it didn't have so many difficulties. But that would not be your path. I mean, that would be your path for a while. You know, it's called, you know, sometimes substance abuse. Or, you know, something seems easy for a while until you, you know, go under and hit bottom and, you know, various things. And if you're lucky, you'll find your way out of all of that. And that was your path. So partly I mention this to you because I'm thinking of one of my friends who was from Denmark. Or was it Holland? Niels.

[11:20]

Niels. Now I can't remember if he was Danish or Dutch. And Niels had left home when he was about 19. He went to, got on a boat, got a job. Ended up in Japan and started practicing Zen a little bit in Japan. When he got to Tassajara, it was in the 60s, and he was drunk. In the 60s, you could still do this. You could come down the road, you know, 14 miles, up 3,000 feet, you know, 1,000 meters, down 1,000 meters, an hour driving. And you could come and you could say, I want to practice Zen.

[12:22]

So he did. Then we put you in a room and tell you to sit until we tell you to stop. Do you understand? It's called Tongariyo. Sit. And show us how sincere you are. And we'll see if you really want to stay or if you decide to leave. So he sobered up sitting. We feed you. We let you sleep. Niels was, you know, the director of Tassajara for a while. One time, you know, when he was director, we had a student, David.

[13:27]

David Chadwick. Do you know David Chadwick? David is the author of a biography of Suzuki Roshi called Crooked Cucumber. It's several hundred pages, and David has made it his life work to collect stories about Suzuki Roshi, to see that all the tapes of his lectures are preserved. When Niels was the director, David used to, was worked in the dining room. He was head of the dining room where the guests would come. Students aren't allowed to have alcohol at Tassajara, but guests can bring alcohol, and especially when they come to dinner, they might bring wine to dinner. So David was very friendly, and pretty soon, instead of serving the food to the guests, he would be sitting down and drinking wine with them. Then he would clean up after dinner, and when the cleanup was done,

[14:35]

he'd go to somebody's cabin and keep drinking. Scotch, brandy, hard liquor. And then he would stay up until 12, 1, 2 o'clock in the morning. So when the wake-up bell rang, he didn't get up. And he wouldn't be at Morning Sazen, he wouldn't be at Recitation, he wouldn't be at the study, he wouldn't be at breakfast. And then after all of this, there was a meeting in Suzuki Rishi's cabin for the people who were the leaders of the temple. So David would come to that, he's the head of the dining room. He'd go to the meeting with Suzuki Rishi. So one morning, he hadn't been to anything. You could still smell the alcohol on his breath.

[15:37]

And David came to the meeting, and Suzuki Rishi, there's tea served, and everybody's quiet and silent. And then you sip your tea. Everybody bows. Then you sip your tea. And the way it's done, the Japanese style, is to hold the teacup, you know, with two hands. One underneath, one on the side. And because then you focus on what you're doing, using both hands, and drink. And after we'd had a little sip of tea, Suzuki Rishi would talk. Maybe he would say somebody's coming to visit or... what he was going to lecture about or something. What work needed to get done. And then he would say, do you have anything you want to bring up?

[16:41]

And Neil said, Suzuki Rishi, what do we do with a student who's always breaking the rules? Over and over again, drinking alcohol. Suzuki Rishi paused. And he said, everyone is making their best effort. And Neil said, but he's breaking the rules over and over again, right in front of us. Don't we need to do something? Suzuki Rishi said, it's better that he does it in the open, than that he hides it from us. And Neil kept going, he said, but we need to do something. We can't just let people break the rules, endlessly over and over again. We need to set an example for other students.

[17:44]

And Suzuki Rishi said, sometimes, someone is following the spirit of the rules, even if they're not following the letter of the rule. And Neil said, wouldn't it be better if you followed the letter of the rule, and not just the spirit? And Suzuki Rishi said, yes. That would be best. So, it turned out that David, who didn't, you know, get asked to leave or anything, you know, David, ended up being the person to collect hundreds and hundreds of stories about Suzuki Rishi, and to preserve all of his lectures. He's made it his life's work. To know Suzuki Rishi's story, and to have an archive,

[18:48]

and to do all of that. And Neil said, he had cancer, finally, and, you know, died. He wasn't very old, maybe 60. I last saw him at Tazara. I hadn't seen him in 25 years. But, people you sit with, you know, Neil and I lived at the same time at Tazara for two years, three years. People you sit with, you feel close to. So, Neil and I began visiting.

[19:54]

He said that his girlfriend had broken up with him. She was a little younger than he was. He said he really liked her. But she broke up with him. He felt very sad. And he started thinking about it. Because, you know, when you feel sad, it's not just one thing. It opens up all the things that you might have felt sad about. Grief is like this. So, he was feeling sad, and he remembered, oh, when he was 19,

[21:06]

his girlfriend had broken up with him, and that's why he left home and got a job on a boat and ended up in Japan. And it set him on the course of his life, practicing Zen. And he ended up in California, lived in America for years, for the rest of his life. And then, he had been thinking about it some more, and he realized when he was 4, his mother said, Neil, your father and I, we never wanted you. You were a mistake. Do you understand? And his mother must have been upset with him about something. But, you know, we never wanted you.

[22:07]

He felt very hurt when he was 4 years old. And then you start looking for, you know, who does want you. Is there someplace you belong? And sometimes, you know, it's family. Sometimes it's, you know, something bigger. It's, you know, a practice, like Zen. Or sometimes, you know, you have ceremony, and you have a Buddhist name. Sometimes, you know, it's feeling, after all, you belong in this world. No matter how

[23:11]

uncertain, and, you know, strange, or whatever, you know, your life seems. In English, I think of the word flaky. Do you know flaky? In English. You know, no certificates. Anyway, you, you can feel sometimes, like, even though you have no reason to think so, I belong here. You start to know, I belong here. You belong in this life. This is what Dogen says, you know, when you first look for the Dharma, it feels as though you are far away from the environment of Dharma. You look for the Dharma, where is the teaching? And it feels as though you're far away from it. But Dogen says, as soon as you start to practice,

[24:24]

immediately, you realize your original self. Immediately, you realize your original self. And, you know, we start to feel at home in our body, at home with our breath, at home with our thinking, at home with our feelings. Where else were you going to go? But here. So make yourself at home. Sometimes home is, has its problems, but you still don't have so much choice but to make yourself at home where you are. So this is not so unusual, you know.

[25:44]

I'm three or four years old, or seven years old, or two years old. Something painful happens, and we study, how do I, what should I do? Where should I go? How should I spend my time? So Nils lived in the state of Washington. I think on Puget Sound. The water, near the water. And after he divorced his wife, he was a carpenter, so he built, he had his house, and then same property, he built her house next door. And they had a son.

[26:49]

His name was Nils. And when I saw Nils, his son was 18. And he said that when his son had been 15, his son had been getting in trouble and being arrested. And he or his ex-wife would have to go get him out of jail. So his ex-wife kept saying to him, Nils, you need to do something. You need to make him behave. How are you going to do that? So he started thinking about it.

[27:50]

And people suggested various ways and things. I don't know what, you know, you try here, but people in the states have various ideas. And Nils didn't like any of them. How to. Work with a teenage boy. And one day he was listening to the radio, and he heard a man talking, being interviewed. A man named Monty Roberts. And he listened to Monty Roberts, and he thought, that's for me. That's what I will do. And Monty Roberts is, there's a book by Monty Roberts that he wrote.

[29:16]

It's, he's the man who listened to horses. Listened, he was horse whisperer. Such a remarkable story. Talk about somebody's path or journey. His father had, was in charge, do you know rodeo? Rodeo in Salinas in California. His father had, and the term used, you know, is broken horses for years. You, you, do all kinds of things to make them, let you ride them. You hit them and put things over their heads and do all kinds of stuff. And after a while the horse, you know, is broken. You break the spear of the horse and then you can ride it. So Monty Roberts' father had been doing this for years.

[30:22]

And he sent a young Monty to Nevada, where there's still wild horses. And he said, go, go find wild horses for the rodeo. And Monty Roberts, you know, 11, 12, 13 years old, he'd watch the wild horses. This is so interesting, isn't it? You might be sitting here watching some wild horses too. You might think they need to be tamed. Sometimes the wild horses are called monkey mind. So various things may go on and they're running around. Monty Roberts watched the wild horses and he learned something about horses

[31:24]

from watching them. Part of why he learned was because his eyesight was bad and he didn't see very much color. And when you don't see color, you can see other things more clearly. Color brings up emotion. So somehow, without so much color, he was able to watch very carefully and he learned about horses. And then he took what he had learned from watching horses and he made a circular corral. And what he noticed was that when horses misbehave, the mother horse tells it, go away. And at first the horse goes outside of the herd and the horse is kind of like, yeah, okay, so what?

[32:27]

After a while it says, can I come back? And they say, uh-uh. You're not ready to come back yet. And the horse, can I come back? Uh-uh. And finally he said, the horse will drop its head to the ground. And when the horse puts its head to the ground, the mother horse says, okay, come back now. Very important that, you know, a horse drops its head to the ground. Now you can come back. So he created a circular corral, told the horse to go away. And the horse goes around the outside of the corral and he keeps going, go on, go on. And the horse is going around the corral. And the horse all the time is wanting to, like, could you let me come see you?

[33:32]

He says, no, keep going, go on. Finally the horse puts its head down and he says, okay, come on. And then he puts on a blanket and a saddle and gets on it and rides. And in less than half an hour, he could ride a horse, any horse. Even horses later that had been terribly abused. When he showed it to his father, finally, he was still like, I don't know, 13 or something. His father watched that and he said, what have I been raising? He was so angry. And he took chains and he beat this little boy until he was almost dead. His father was so angry. His father never understood his son.

[34:37]

So painful. But somehow, Monty Roberts learned something about horses and then he learned something about people. He, by the way, for a while had pet deer, too. Because you can do, it's much harder with the deer, but if the deer runs away and you follow it and you catch up with it and keep telling it to go away, and keep following it, finally the deer comes to you and then inseparable. But he finally decided that it wasn't a good idea to have a deer around your house. Because you don't know who will come by and want to kill it. He said deer are very jealous. What do you mean you have a horse for a friend, too? Or a cat?

[35:43]

No, me. Just me. So eventually, after many, many years of... So, you know, they don't call it breaking a horse. It's training a horse. Monty Roberts started working with teenage boys. He had a similar idea and he said... So the part when Nils was listening to Monty Roberts... Monty Roberts said that the important thing with a teenage boy is never to shame the boy. Do you know shaming? You are such an idiot. You're so irresponsible. What is wrong with you? Why can't you behave?

[36:46]

What is your problem? This is what especially men will do. But sometimes women also. And when the boy is shamed like this, then the boy doesn't know. Where's my home? Where's my family? Who can I trust? Who's on my side? Who knows me? Who sees me? Who knows my heart? So Nils heard that on the radio and he went to his son that evening and he said... I put my hands in Gassho

[37:48]

to my son and I said I vow never to shame you again. And if I do, without knowing it, I want you to tell me that you just felt whenever you feel shamed. Because I don't intend to do that. I might do it by mistake. And after a few months, they were best of friends. So this is also important, you know, for sitting. There's no... It's important not to shame yourself. Why can't I sit? Why can't I make my mind quiet? What is wrong with you? We tell ourselves, we start to... In English, it's called beating yourself up.

[38:51]

We start to criticize ourselves. And demean ourselves. Find something wrong with ourselves. And we get mad. So, the one who's getting mad, have them make a vow not to shame you. Not always so easy, but you can try. You can say, excuse me, but when you talk to me like that, I feel very discouraged. Please find another way to encourage me. I know you're trying to help, but that's not helpful. Find a way that is. You know, Zen...

[39:56]

Katagiri Roshi said, Zen is not like training your dog. This isn't a theater. It's not a performance space. You know, if you do it well, you get applause and... another job. You know,

[41:05]

I don't know. As Suzuki Roshi said, you know, each of us is making our best effort. Sometimes, someone is following the spirit of the rule, even if they're not following the letter of the rule. So, this is important that we remember that we're making

[42:06]

our best effort. And that doesn't mean that the results of our best effort are perfect, or are the results that we aimed for or wanted. Sometimes, you may bow your head when it seems as though everything you could do was not good enough, and finally you bow your head, and you're welcomed back. Somehow, it brings you back

[43:11]

into your life. Huh. Right on schedule. Just now, when we sit here, and I'm not talking, you can tell the silence is very deep.

[44:11]

The silence has this capacity to welcome you back, to welcome you into your life. So, during the week, you know, you will have many experiences. Some you like, and some you don't. Oh, well. Such a surprise. So, during the week, we'll sit here,

[45:33]

and we'll go on sitting with this silence. Okay. Okay, thank you. Thank you.

[46:41]

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