I'm going to tell you about that. I've got to go to this place. I must say it's awfully nice to be here, and to be in this room, and to sit with all of you. Most of the time, on Mountain View, this area is kind of, you know, somewhere a pass-through or a pass-by. From San Francisco to Tassajara, or to Santa Cruz, or somewhere. So this is like this empty place, and now it actually, you know, there's people here. And there's this place where all of you can come and sit together, and get to know yourselves and one another.

[01:15]

It's really important. I have some friends now. People I've known from sitting, you know, people I've known, like the last number of people I've known for more than 25 years now. It's really nice to have friends. You know, a while back, I was, I got sort of a late start, you know, being an idealistic Zen student, turning over all the world to Zen centers. So I got a little late starting, you know, like, I didn't have any money to do anything in life. You know, buy a house, and start an IRA, you know. I saw this thing in the paper that if person A saves $1,000 a year for 8 years, with the same interest as person B who starts in year number 9, person B starts saving $1,000 a year. So as long as I'm saving $1,000 a year, person A stops after 8 years.

[02:20]

Person A always has more money than person B. So I got, you know, like about a 20 year late start. But, you know, I have this other kind of wealth of friends and Dharma. So it's really quite nice. So, how about if I tell you a story of Zen? One of my favorite Zen stories is the story about Ikkyu. Maybe you know this story. Ikkyu, when he was a student, studied with a teacher who was very severe. They wore the same robe in the winter and in the summer. And they had one blanket a night. And it would snow in the wintertime, and they would get quite cold, and most of the other students left.

[03:25]

And somehow Ikkyu decided to stay, and he stayed for many years. Four or five or six years. And during the summertime, he liked to get in a little boat and row out on Lake Biwa, and then let the boat float and drift, and he would meditate. And one day while he was sitting in the boat and meditating, he heard a crow calling. Caw! Caw! So he went back to his teacher and told him what had happened. And the teacher said, That's very good, Ikkyu, but it's still not the enlightenment of the Buddhist ancestors. And Ikkyu said, I don't care. It's good enough for me. And the teacher said, That's the enlightenment of the Buddhist ancestors.

[04:29]

So each of us has the same awakening or enlightenment of Buddhism, and since we have it, we would say, you have it already. Already you have a body, already each of us has a mind. Already each of us is awake and alive. So we say, mind itself is Buddha. Each of us is already Buddha. Already we have Buddha mind, Buddha nature. We wear Buddha's clothes. We eat Buddha's food. We live in Buddha's house. And we have a lot of friends who are Buddha. Is it good enough? Enough.

[05:37]

Or is there something else you could chase after? I'd better. On down the road. I sometimes think so. There's a similar story where a monk asked the Zen teacher Chow Chow, who was, as you may know quite well, a Chinese Zen master. Some people said the golden light came out of his mouth and he talked. You know, you could just see it. So he must have been pretty brilliant. Anyway, one day a monk asked Zen master Chow Chow, how do I get to the summit of the Misty Peak?

[06:41]

And Chow Chow said, I won't answer your question. The monk said, well, why not? After all, aren't you a great Zen teacher? Don't you know about these things? And Chow Chow said, if I was to answer your question, you would continue to think that you are on level ground. So where are we now, already? This is an important kind of question. Is there a level ground? Is there a summit of the Misty Peak? Is there some other place than here? And how can we be here in such a way we understand and appreciate our life

[07:43]

as confused or distraught as it might be at times? So I said, when I dropped out of college, I was going to Antioch in Ohio. My brother sent me Zen stories from Paul Repp's books, Zen Blessed Ten Bones. And one of them is a story about the young man who writes home to his mother and says, I'm doing very well in school. I'm getting good grades. I help other kids. And things are going great. His mom writes back and says, Son, I didn't raise you to be a walking dictionary. Why don't you go to the mountains and obtain true realization? I thought that was for me. So at the end of the year came and I got this

[08:46]

in a Ligon school form. It said, Reasons for Ligon. And I put down, to go to the mountains and obtain true realization. That was in 1964. And in 1966, I was at Tassara. So as the saying goes, you know, you have to be careful what you wish for, you might get it. I ended up at Tassara. Actually, it was the last year it was a resort. And my friend and I sat dozing in the barn. Actually, we sat dozing for a while in one of the cabins. Until the woman who worked in the office who lived across the way from us complained about the little noise we would make when we had a mokupio of the size of a fist. And we did. And we had a chance. After sitting in the barn. And... And then I am...

[09:49]

I ended up learning how to make bread and starting to cook. And then Jensen invited me to... After Jensen had bought Tassara, invited me to cook. I was... 22 years old. And, you know, I was a little over my head. A little over my head. It turns out that this is not, you know, entirely bad, but it gets to be embarrassing at times. And... I asked Suzuki Roshi for some advice, and he said, when you cut the carrots, cut the carrots. When you wash the rice, wash the rice. When you stir the soup, stir the soup. So I tried to do this while I was working in the kitchen,

[10:52]

and as far as I can tell, nobody else was. I don't know if you've noticed, but it seems to me that a lot of us, you know, we kind of grew up and we go to school and we watch television and we don't learn how to... even, you know, sweep, practically. People pick up rims sometimes and they do this. And then they, you know, and then they sweep up big clouds of dust. They taught us in Zen, you know, when I was growing up. Make a short little sweep, so you don't sweep up a lot of dust. And then you put the brim with the bristles up, so they don't sit there and, you know, crawl over. This is how you respect the brim. But anyway, people working with me used to come to work late,

[11:56]

and then they'd take long tea breaks. You know, when you're at a monastery, you don't say, Hey, I saw a really good movie last night at the stage. I had this great dream. I'll tell you about it. You hear a lot about people's dreams that they haven't had before. It didn't seem very Zen to me. And I thought that I was really practicing Zen. But anyway, so finally I went to Suzuki Rishi. I asked him, What do you do when, you know, these people are all goofing off, and they waste their time, and they don't take care of things, and they are really sloppy. He seemed to listen to me very carefully. He paused a little bit and said,

[12:57]

If you want to see virtue, you have to have a calm mind. And he said, That's not what I asked you. I asked you how to be a better boss, and you motivated me. I asked you if you could see virtue. So I tried that out. It was really hard sometimes. One day, I sent somebody to get 18 cups of beans, and he didn't come back for 20 minutes. I went to look for him. He was out in the stir room, getting five beans, making sure each one was a bean and not a rock. I decided he was a very thorough person. Very conscientious and very careful.

[13:58]

Sometimes there is this metaphor, this kind of metaphor, which is, a person wakes up in the morning, and you have to sit on your nose. And then you put on your clothes, and you think, Gee, these clothes, I don't smell anything. But it's longer than they are. Then everybody you meet, you think, Oh, you really stink, guys. You've really got a problem. And then you get breakfast. It's really awful. It's really awful. Everything is kind of smelly. So, in this kind of narrative, at some point one realizes, the shit is on one's own nose. You have to find out how to wipe it off, so you can see the virtue. After that, I started getting,

[15:15]

for a while, I started getting really angry. This is traditional Zen practice. You know, two, three years. You know, in a relationship, right? Thirty, three months, 90 days is the number. That's it. If you're lucky. Zen and Zen practice, 90 day honeymoon. This is so wonderful. I really love Zen practice. Then you start to wonder, like, Is this good for anything? And then this goes on. So after a couple of years, you start getting really angry. After you've been angry for a couple of years, you can get really quite afraid. After that, you might be quite sad. It's just the natural progress.

[16:17]

I started getting angry because the people would walk up to me, and as though they were looking around the corner of the building. What kind of mood is he in? I get ready to duck. There are stories about how I do things in the kitchen. You may or may not have heard them. Most of them are not true stories. But there's enough truth for this story. So I do things. It didn't help. One day, I went out of the kitchen, and I was wearing glasses to my face. I took off my glasses. I set them down on the counter. And I got down on the ground, and I beat my fist on the ground. I was so mad. And my friend, who was there, my friend Alan, he said, I was so embarrassed. You took off your glasses so effectively, and then you got angry. I wasn't very spontaneous.

[17:28]

So people had lots of advice for me. They wanted me to stop being angry. And, you know, as far as I was concerned, I was just being true to myself. What are you supposed to do when you feel angry anyway? Impress it? You know, what are you supposed to do? If you feel angry, then you're angry. Isn't that the truth? Isn't that the dent? So I had to have... It took a little while to discover and acknowledge that, you know, I had this shit on my nose. But, you know, one day I was talking to Mr. Zuckerich, and he said to me, you can get angry if you want, but don't. That sort of pissed off me. I thought it was really nice of him to say, you can get angry if you want. I kind of relaxed then. That's nice.

[18:43]

And then he said, sit down. It's pretty simple. But I couldn't do that teaching very well. This is kind of, you know, the quick approach. But... So then one day, Karagiri Roshi was there, and he said, I heard that he wanted me to have dōsan. And I don't know what you do here, but I have never heard of anybody being called into dōsan. In our tradition, you know, usually the student asks for dōsan. And if you don't ask for dōsan, you don't get called in. So I went. If you've been to dōsan, you know it's quite interesting. You're very close to someone.

[19:49]

And if you don't go to Karagiri Roshi, he's a man of utmost sincerity and utmost virtue. He's famous, you know, for his gasshō. He would put his hands exactly together in front of his face, which he's holding in his arms. And you know, there's the Sengaku Center in the city, Karagiri Roshi's gasshō, and this is where he was. I think here he was still a little relaxed, but here he was totally. Very sincere. Careful. He said to me, I hear that you've been angry a lot, and something you need to work on.

[20:56]

Because it's upsetting to the other students. You see, if it's upsetting to the other students, they're going to have to work on their own things. You shouldn't be upset so easily. Laughter This is a monastery. And at a monastery, they try to live in peace and harmony with everyone. I said, well, why don't they try to live in peace and harmony with me then? He said, they're so upset with me. He said, this is a monastery and we all need to practice living in peace and harmony with one another.

[21:58]

You also need to live in peace and harmony with others. I said, but I'm just being true to myself. Just expressing myself and how I feel. Only after a moment. Finally, he said, Ed, I'm giving you a piece of advice. You know, I'm making a thread up the way. And you better take it. And I said, OK. I'll try, but I don't know what to do about this. I've been trying for a long time.

[22:58]

So then he said, why don't you chant the Heart Sutra while you sit down? I said, but that's not Zazen. When you practice Zazen, you don't chant the Heart Sutra. Sometimes you have to explain these things to your teacher. They forget. Zazen is not chanting. I said, I don't know the Heart Sutra by heart. But if you know Gaze, Gaze, Heart, Gaze, you can just chant that over and over. So I did. And about three days later, I was still singing one day, and the anger dropped away. It's not like I haven't been angry since then, but the kind of anger that comes up and grabs you and won't ever let go.

[24:10]

That kind of anger. And when you feel completely helpless, and like you've just lost, and you'll never win. Anyway, it dropped away, and I shut my mouth. I thought, let me try that again. I'll try that again, and then I'll let go of it. I stayed at Tassajara for about seven or eight years. Most of the time through the fall of 1973. Got out of the kitchen after a while. I had another kind of experience.

[25:16]

I sometimes think that this finding out about one's own Buddha nature, mind and self is Buddha. This is a group who said, mind is Buddha. It's self thinks are Buddha. It's activity is Buddha. And Buddha is Buddha. So on one hand, you know, one has to, at times, have one's nose rubbed in the shit to find out that the shit is there in one's nose and it needs to be cleaned off. And it's not that, you know, the world is the problem, or other people are the problem. One of the things that helped me was Suzuki Rishi. Suzuki Rishi helped me a lot. I'll tell you a couple of stories. One day I was working in the kitchen. And I was, you know, and then we have this tradition when the bell rings, you serve the food.

[26:21]

Familiar with that? Well, just so you know, this is not something that is a key point in every spiritual tradition. I was at a spiritual community in Vermont, for instance, and their tradition is when the food is ready, the bell is rung. And do you have a problem with that? Do you have a tight about, like, stigma or something? What's your problem? It's nice. Who's been waiting a while? Who's ready to ring the bell? Take it easy. This is the tradition of auspicious coincidence. The tradition, also known as crazy wisdom. Anyway, our tradition is when the bell is rung, food is served.

[27:27]

So this is a different kind of pressure for the cook, as opposed to this other tradition. Where you share the pressure with the people who are going to be eating, so they wait and be relaxed. So in our tradition, the cook experiences a certain amount of anxiety about getting this food ready on time. And usually it's the head cook in particular who experiences the difficulty. But, what's your problem? What are you getting so tight about? But, you know, the one person who has the responsibility to see if it's ready on time, feels it personally somehow. So I was feeling this kind of anxiety. And rather oblivious to the world around me.

[28:30]

And while I was busy, it was like, you know, this storm going on. How are we going to do it? This agitation and anxiety and stress. And then I heard someone's name being called. And then I heard my name being called. Only it took me a while to figure it out, because it was an Ed that I didn't know. I mean, somebody was calling the name Ed. But the Ed that I knew was quite agitated and stressed out. But the Ed who was being called was one of the nicest people to be ever put to use. And it was his secretary standing in the very kitchen, calling my name. And I finally realized that it was him calling my name.

[29:35]

A person that I didn't know I was. Very nice person. Very good person. And my eye relaxed. And it was like clouds being blown away and the sun coming up. Blue sky. I felt very warm all over. Very clean. Very good. So this is, you know, also who we are. And we tend to forget that these are basic natures. And sometimes it's something as simple as that. Somebody calling our name. It reminds us we're not just a person we think we are. And that we don't have to identify quite so strongly with that particular mental or physical phenomenon we're experiencing that we meet.

[30:42]

We're someone else's much bigger, larger part of the man. And another, and you know... Then to calm down, or shut up, or if you just touch me, it's just a kind of reassurance. And it helps us remember. And sitting sometimes, that helps us remember after a while. Another thing that happened in Suzuki Roshi, I lived in the first cabin across the bridge.

[31:50]

The doorway to that cabin, the floor of the cabin was about two feet above the ground. It was a big step up. You know? About like this. Probably a little more. It was hard to get in and out of my cabin. So I piled up some rocks. I didn't at the time know anything about rock work, so I just kind of piled them up. And when you stepped on them, they would boggle a little bit. And sometimes you'd think that maybe they were going to slide, and then you might fall. One time I was standing on the bridge there, and Suzuki Roshi and me was looking over at the rocks there outside my door. And he said, you know, in Japan, we pile up rocks like that on graves sometimes. I felt a little humiliated.

[32:58]

I felt a little kind of embarrassed. Like, I'm sorry, I don't really know about rock work. He said, it feels funny, you know, since I'm from Japan, to buy these stones like that. I think maybe somebody's died in there. I don't know. A few weeks later, I was talking to him, and he was having a moment. And I started to think, oh, Ed, by the way, do you know that big rock outside the office? Now outside the office is fortified with rocks. But at that time, there was one big rock outside the office. And people used to get their mail in the office and go out and sit on that rock, use their mail. And go and sit on that rock and smoke cigarettes. It was like a real kind of focal point. Did you know that rock outside the office, I'm asking Paul Disco to bring it over to your cabinet this afternoon to see your doorstep.

[34:07]

Is that all right? I said, but you know, that rock is a real central part of the community. People will miss it. He said, that's all right. You can get other rocks. So that afternoon, I was in my cabin, and I heard this awful noise. Because they put that rock in a little metal sled and put it exactly where I was waiting. And it was coming across the bridge. The height was as big as that little chopper. And I heard that, and I went to the spot. And I heard the noise. And I saw that there were rocks over the side. And that rock had someone on it. And I stood on that rock. First saw it, first heard it. And I remembered.

[35:08]

And every time I go in and out of my cabin, I look at the situation. And how kind you are. And how thoughtful you are. And how much you care for each one of us. And again, you know, each of us, we do things like this each day. Maybe not something so big as a rock and heavy as a rock like that. But we make a cup of coffee for someone. We make tea for someone. We put food into people. We smile. We make various gestures in awe of our appreciation.

[36:17]

And after one minute, we leave in the room empty. And when you're careful and you're quiet and when your mind is calm, you'll be able to see this kind of virtue in others. And you'll see this kind of virtue in yourself. And you'll notice it's not just someone who died over 20 years ago, but someone in you and someone in your friend.

[37:25]

And each of us, you know, we think sometimes same practice is about detachment and somehow letting go of things. But it's also about being able to be touched by others and by our own good heartedness. Even if it's only in small gestures. The Dalai Lama, for instance, you know, says that good is in this good heartedness. And sometimes he talks that if you go on a pilgrimage, it means you're basically on a pilgrimage for some spiritual purpose. Because you can do a little business along the way if you want. That's alright as long as you're basically on a pilgrimage.

[38:35]

And I found out a couple of years ago, you know, it's much better to be on a pilgrimage than to be like on vacation. I went with my friend Patty to Europe and we went first of all to Geneva where my daughter was living. And she left a couple of days later. I'd run up here enough to come to California where we had just come from. And then after that we were going to go to Plum Village where Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese Zen teacher. And I've known Thich Nhat Hanh now for many years and every time I see him he says, Dad, when are you coming to France? And I always, for a while I would make up excuses like, I'm really not traveling these days. Then the next time I'd say it he'd say, are you still not traveling?

[39:39]

And I'd say, well actually I'm going to New York. Oh, well then you'll be coming to France too, won't you? So I felt like I had to go on this pilgrimage. Now, you know, having spent a fair amount of time at Venice, you know, the Tathagatari and so on, it's not like I feel like if I get to Plum Village I will have arrived at the center of some spiritual Mecca. I wasn't expecting that, you know. But it did make my trip. It did allow for the trip to be a little more graceful than it would have been otherwise. One of the things that happened was that my ex-wife and her husband, or we were staying, they got into a big fight and he kept himself to his bed. He couldn't sleep. And so then the next day we decided to leave.

[40:44]

And we went to Lyon. And when we got to Lyon on the train, we had made reservations at a hotel but we couldn't find where to get the taxi. And we couldn't figure out how to get there. And we would ask people and they would answer, you know, more or less in French. We even found somebody who spoke English. And we couldn't figure out how to get to that hotel. It seemed to be sort of like through these buildings across the way. There didn't seem to be a street that went there. And there was this big, you know, freeway. And then how do you get over or under that? It was very confusing. We thought it's only a few blocks from the train station that you walk. And then our bags were too heavy to walk there. We couldn't find the taxi cabs. And we decided to stay at the hotel right by the train station. And it was fine, we thought. And then we got up to a room and then it seemed nice enough, you know, kind of cheap, nice enough. And then we discovered that it was really hot, so we opened the window.

[41:47]

And then it turned out the traffic was very nice, so we closed the window. And then it got hot, so we opened the window. Then we gave up on sleeping. We were quite jet-lagged still. And then, you know, we kept reminding ourselves that it was just kind of pilgrimage. It's not like we're trying to have a good time. It's not like it's a vacation that we've been waiting for all of our lives. Why don't we go out to this hotel? And then we complained to each other. We were like, well, why did you pick this hotel? And why didn't you find the way to the other one? And how come you didn't know where to text me? You know, you get into these sort of things if you're not careful. But since we were on a pilgrimage, it wasn't a problem. And then the next day we got on the train. Oh, then the next day from Lyon we went to Paris. The TGV came later.

[42:49]

And, you know, the big, the bullet train ride. It was really fast. Two hours from Paris. Then the thing in Paris is you have to get from one train station to the other. We decided to take the metro. I've done this once before. And we had to figure out how to get from the train station to the metro. It's not that complicated. We got down to the metro. There was a line of 30 Japanese school kids waiting to buy their subway tickets. It turns out that Paris these days is full of Japanese school children. There are tons of concordance on these European vacations now. Anyway, it took a long time to get our subway tickets. Like about 10 minutes. And we had this reservation on a train from the other station to go to Bordeaux. Which is near Brooklyn Villages. We got to the train station. And then we had to try to run to get our train. And then we ran to the wrong gate. And we missed our train. And then we...

[43:51]

We tried to figure out how we were going to get to Brooklyn Villages. You know, our destination. The Great Spirit's destination. Anyway, we finally figured out how to get a train to Bordeaux. And then we got to Bordeaux. And then we took a train to the mall. And then we wanted to take the train from there to the little train station. I forget the name of it. Which is near Plum Village where somebody was going to meet us at a certain time. And we got on the little train there. And after a while, we crossed this big river. And then there was this giant train station that said Bordeaux. We were wondering if there was like two of these. Bordeaux is like this. And it turned out, of course, that we'd taken the train back in the wrong direction. We'd arrived back in Bordeaux. And this is not uncommon, you know, when you're trying to get to a spiritual destination. Anyway.

[44:58]

Anyway, we did eventually arrive. And again, we were reassured by the fact that we were in Plum Village. And this obviously is the sort of thing that happens on a pilgrimage. Anyway, this is the entrance. But it's pretty nice. You know, if you're just on a pilgrimage, you don't have to worry so much as if you think that it's important to arrive somewhere or to be having a good time. I'll tell you one short story. You know, just a couple of things. One is, I've really concluded over the years, you know, that this spiritual practice business, it's not like an insurance policy. I thought this for a long time, you know, like you said. You put, you know, it's like, you know, what do we do with insurance? Five dollars a month or, you know, twenty dollars a year. Like now, health insurance is like, you know, it's terrible.

[46:02]

You pay this money, and suppose it's this little bit of money, and then it's, something bad happens, and then you have, you know, like this, you know, you're covered. And I thought, well, if you sit Zazen, like you put in your Christian time, you know, regularly, it's like taking out this spiritual insurance policy. And then that bad stuff isn't going to happen to you. You know, like, you don't get sick, you know, and your kids are all fine, and, you know, stuff doesn't happen to you. And now so many things have happened over the years, you know, I'm beginning to doubt this. Anyway, maybe it's true. You know, I don't know, I'm not convinced about it, but I like doing, you know, practicing anyway. Because I like it, that's all. I like sitting in. But anyway, sometimes, I'll just tell you one story now.

[47:03]

This is not really a Zen story, but it's sort of like a Zen story. Then you get to ask questions. Or whatever. But I heard this story recently, and do you know that series of the Oxfordian pictures it's in? Okay. This is sort of like a Zen Oxfordian picture, or story. And, you know, in the Zen Oxfordian pictures, one discovers that life is a beast, or that one's self is a beast. And that there's certainly a lot of beastly things going on in one's attempt to tame the beast. And there's a wonderful picture in the Oxfordian series of the rider riding the ox home, sitting backwards, playing the upside down flute with no halt. Doesn't that sound wonderful? Like, you can relax now, because the ox will just take you home, and you don't even have to watch where you're going. And the ox nose will get you there. Tremendous, you know, sort of confidence and trust in the beastliness of life. And then not only that, you just kind of are playing this upside down flute with no halt.

[48:08]

And somehow you get music out of the deal. This is mysterious. And then, you know, I mentioned in the Oxfordian series that the ox and the rider disappear. And I've also concluded that, you know, really the secret is not how to tame the beast, but how to tame the rider. So here's a story about, this is about a dairy farmer. And each morning, he used to get up quite early in his practice. Instead of going to the center, he used to round up his dairy cows and get them into the barn for milking. And most days this went pretty well, but some days there was one particular cow that would stop right in the doorway of the barn. Wouldn't go in, wouldn't go out. And usually when this happened, the farmer would already be in the barn. The cows that were outside behind him, the cow couldn't get in.

[49:12]

And he would get quite agitated and angry and upset with this cow. Get in here. What's wrong with you? Stop, you know, getting in the way of everything. Come on, get in here. Sometimes he'd get so furious that he'd actually go over to the cow and start yanking on it. And if you know cows, which we all do in a certain sense, you've never met any resistance in your own being. When you pull on that cow, the cow pulls back. Cows are stronger than people are. So, when he would pull on the cow, the cow would pull back and he would be yelling at the cow to get in here. And he'd be yanking and sometimes he would even try to prop himself against the wall and use the wall to leverage.

[50:18]

But one day his 11-year-old son saw him doing this though. And the 11-year-old son got up thinking that he was running over the cow and yanked on the cow's tail. And he went right into the pond. So this is another sort of thing that happens in our life. Sometimes we do need to back up a little bit. And maybe slip out a side door. Or maybe come up around behind the cow. And sometimes yank on the tail. You know, without really thinking about it much. So when we give ourselves a chance, sometimes, you know, it feels as though meditation or our life in some way is at this kind of impact. Sometimes. Until we get on the way to pull on the cow's tail.

[51:22]

But most of the time, you know, we wonder why the cow is so unpredictable and resistant. And... Anyway, that's another lecture I always talk about. So this talk sort of started out with this theme, right? And it kind of went off. Anyway, excuse me, I usually try to have my talks have this beginning and middle and end. And sort of come back to the beginning. But what do you think about anything? Something you want to talk about now? By the way, if you'd like to move, make yourself comfortable. As Thich Nhat Hanh says, please enjoy your breath. I found this very good for meditation. And, you know, he stopped during retreats at Greenbelt because he found Zen students so serious.

[52:30]

And he used to say, if you're not smiling, you're wasting your time. And then, you know, all of the Zen students used to look at him. But, you know, if you enjoy your breath by your feet, it really helps your concentration. Joy is one of the five factors of absorption. It's much easier to concentrate when you're enjoying your breath. And if you just think it's a chore to do, then you have to apply yourself to it. And there's no fun there. Anyway, what do you have to do? Now that you're comfortable and, you know, breathing easy in. And we can't wait for all of our problems to be solved until we breathe easy. That's about 18,000 lifetimes away. All right, so what's up?

[53:31]

Did you ever go out with Suzuki Roshi at one of his rock gatherings? Yes, I did. I don't know how I remember this because I worked with him on stone walls. And it was very interesting sometimes. You know, people at Tassara used to, whenever they found a beautiful stone, would bring it to Suzuki Roshi. So there was a whole pile of them there. By what is now the Kaisendon. But the thing that jumps up, you know, the thing that I remember is we were walking down by the lower barn. And he spotted a rock about 30 feet up from the other side and said, I want it. And I don't know how he knew that from 30 feet down. But he spotted that rock. And he knew right away it was going to be a cornerstone in the wall with him. It's a very particular kind of rock. It has a corner. It's about this high. And then on the two sides it goes like this.

[54:34]

And then it goes level here. And then it goes down like this. And then the other side goes down like this. So it fits right there in the corner. It doesn't go anywhere. Some of the walls at Tassara have been made where, you know, the mountain is back here. And they're setting the stones like this. And then they set a stone on top of it. Do you understand? And then years go by and then the stone that's set on top of this stone slides right off the road. And then all the stones that were on top of that stone fall down too. I repaired some of those. So he did it. So the stone underneath is like this. And then the stone on top sits there. And this is a rock that... It was just right. He walked up the hill and... I couldn't understand why he wanted that rock. Yes? I want to go back to the point you were talking about.

[55:39]

Auspicious coincidence tradition. And ringing the bell is a tradition. Which one makes better food? Well, historically, you know, people who are interested in food and baking come to the Zen center. And people who are psychologists go to the... Psychologists and therapists, they go there. That's auspicious coincidence. Yeah. I also found out a curious sort of phenomenon too. They tell me like, you know, we chant the precepts every morning. And we have these precepts not to have any alcohol. And if you're planning to have any alcohol that day, don't chant that precept every morning. It just keeps your mouth shut when it comes to that. It's a real experience. It's cool. Apparently the precepts just last 24 hours. And then you have another chance.

[56:41]

The other sort of extreme is to take up arms. He's worked a lot on the precepts over the last few years. At first he didn't think it would be so useful for Westerners. He said it would really be helpful, the precepts would be quite helpful. So he's articulated quite clearly, especially the first five precepts. Not to kill, not to steal, not to... have sexual misconduct, not to lie. And he's expanded on them. So that... eating foods, you know, oppression in third world countries. And not having alcohol includes drugs. And then he wants people who take this precept. Unlike in our tradition is you take the precept about alcohol, you have to take the precept to be careful or conscious about your use of alcohol. And he decided that just wasn't going to work. It's too much suffering.

[57:46]

And then he also says it's not just the alcohol that people drink, but the fact that alcohol is made from, you know, food. It's all that beer made from grains that can feed people. And so he... and of course he points out that if people in the developed countries ate, you know, have as much meat as people drink, you know, have so much alcohol it would be very easy to feed everybody. So he's expanded on the precepts and then not only that, but to see if you... if you took the precepts a few years ago, you know, now they're being upgraded. And so, for instance, when we were at Plum Village that summer, which was two summers ago, we just happened to be there when he was talking about the third precept, about not committing sexual misconduct. And so at that time he said that this meant not to have a sexual relationship without a lifetime commitment. And of course then some of the people who had taken the precepts the year before,

[58:51]

they had just been... It had been that you shouldn't have a sexual relationship without a... outside the context of a loving and committed relationship. But that committed was not specified as lifetime, you see. So then a year later it became, you know, so then people the next day were sort of saying, I wonder if this applies to me now, this isn't the one that I took. But these precepts have a way of sneaking in on you. I find it very useful. I was thinking about that and that I appreciate very much this... this kind of premise. I think the precepts play a character. Even though I don't feel able to emphasize in quite the right way the precepts. I wonder what they're saying about

[60:00]

the Japanese influence on Islam. I've brought people here and they thought this was so strange that they wanted to come back. Yeah, well it's a matter of, you know, at some point it's a matter of aesthetics. But it's because of that that, you know, some people are doing Zen without so much of that. So it really depends on... You know, each way seems to have its value or its uses and it seems to be useful to some people. But, you know, in New York, at Riverdale, Tetsugan Sensei, he said, you know, he tries to... He doesn't have a Buddha. But he wants to be able to have Christians and Jewish people and Catholics

[61:07]

and people be able to come without being Buddhas, without being Christians or Japanese. And it is interesting, it's one of the sorts of koans or questions that Zen in America, you know, has. Because it was pretty obvious, I mean, at least from my point of view, I don't know what Les thought, but last year, a couple of years ago when we had that, a year ago in the fall, we had that meeting at Tatsuharu with Zen teachers from all over the world. And it's pretty obvious that, you know, as far as the Zen teachers from Japan, the form is Zen. So it's like, what's left after that? You know, that's Zen if it's not the form. But that's also because Japanese people, Japanese culture is very much oriented around form. In a different way than American culture is. American culture is more oriented around accomplishment and getting things done, being independent. And Japanese culture is oriented around form, formality, and feeling what's expected of you.

[62:13]

And in some ways that can be quite a big help for us. As Americans, to have some feeling of doing what's expected of us. And, you know, being there for other people in a way that we're happy to do. It's the same thing with...

[62:33]

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