That's the truth of that, that David does words. Good evening. Are we sober and secure? Or are Catherine and Blanche here? I'm mostly blanche and you're not. We're sober people. Okay. Formal notification. Sober, Catherine. Honest. Honest. That wasn't... Leaving. I was thinking of that. Let's see if I can knock this over at some point.

[01:12]

As happened the last time I was here, Paul Haller and I have traded places. So he was speaking at Santa Cruz tonight and I'm here. And what I have to talk about is something that Blanche and I just completed together, a week's visit to the East Coast and to other Dharma centers. And I wonder if that is of interest to this group since there are many of you I don't know here. Yeah. Thanks. I hope... Does my voice carry? How's this?

[02:26]

Thank you. I've been... I don't know, but I'm working with a head cold or an allergy reaction or something. So I'm not at my peak form. So I'm hoping my energy will hold up for this talk. It might be a short talk. I'm not sure. You know, Mary has been asking me yesterday and today, how were the meetings? What happened? How did they go? And she also asked about a workshop that I co-led at Tassajara this summer. And both of these requests from her, I said we have the same dialogue. I said, well, it depends on who you ask. And she said, well, I'm asking you. And I'm having a little difficulty talking about what just happened because I feel I was very embedded in it and that words don't reach it.

[03:42]

And I feel joyful about this, that it was such an immediate experience for me and that words don't reach it because that's been a powerful teaching for me. And I think it was the teaching that I maybe, when I was there, was missing. And it kind of came around backside and caught up with me. So I have been feeling this is a very rare group of people for me to spend time with. There were 10 or 11 women from the East Coast, Midwest, and California. And eight or nine men from the same geographical distribution.

[04:46]

Norman attended and no name from Nebraska. Most of the other men, I think, came from the East Coast. Portland, but Carlson's from Portland, right. And to have time to spend three or four days with colleagues who are also working with deepening their own understanding of Dharma and bringing it to the American public and to the West, it's a pretty unusual opportunity. This year there was one or two more women than men, which was a shift from the previous meetings.

[05:50]

This has been called the second generation Zen teachers conference. First generation would be the Japanese teachers who came. The second generation is their Dharma heirs. And in a way I'm third generation and I think Blanche is third generation. So it's sort of a mix, second and third. And we met some unusually gifted people who are leading groups in Syracuse and New York, Mount Tremper. And three women who are, in addition to Blanche, who are leading major Dharma centers. Oroko Chayat, she was here last January, I think. She was the abbot at Syracuse Zen Center.

[06:54]

She was a Dharma heir of Edo Roshi from Daibosatsu. Monastery in New York. And Myotai Trice, I guess, I'm not sure how her last name is pronounced. She was the Dharma heir of Daido Lui at Mount Tremper in New York. Just outside of Woodstock, or Woodstock is just outside of Mount Tremper. She was the vice abbess, I guess, and his first Dharma heir. So it's very interesting to see women ascending to these positions, just as Blanche has become co-abbot here. And Karen Suna, she'll be head teacher at the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center.

[07:55]

So that shifts the conversation some, or shifts the energy in the room, or something. It's a little different. And I think, for me, I learned how other groups teach. I learned how the Dharma is presented in Rinzai centers, the language they use, the images they use, the style they use. It's somewhat different from our tradition. And it's invigorating to hear presentations, Dharma talks, and language and emphasis that's somewhat fresh from our perspective. In Southern California, there's a teacher who is experimenting with using art in sessions. A couple of hours every day, at a time to be chosen by each person.

[09:00]

Having each person work with whatever is arising that they cannot express directly. It doesn't have to be a painting or plastic arts. It can be movement. It can be writing. It can be some other art form. But whatever place is arising that you can't reach, that you feel stuck at, that you feel blocked, whether that's resistance or fear or anger or whatever, for you, she's inviting people to be at that place, exactly at that place, in their art. And not to deviate one bit. Not to deviate at all. If resistance, if lack comes up, if a hard place comes up,

[10:02]

if you feel totally stuck, paint that or enact that or be that in some way. Don't get away from that. Just be that. And it felt to me as if it was such an innovative and liberating use of media that one could do it. Sometimes people come to see me and I ask them, you know, just what's arising right now and nothing. You know, it's such a scary thing. We haven't done this too much and so they're not sure what to say. There's nothing between us to handle. But if you took that place in yourself and went out and worked with it and expressed it and explored it and experienced it for two hours, something would shift. It would just shift. So she was telling me that when people do something like that,

[11:11]

they come back to Session refreshed and invigorated. Session has energy from that. And we also heard of practice. Mostly these practice centers are using koans where the role of the teacher is not so much to support the student as to pull the rug out from under the student. The role of the teacher is to huddle away at the student's dependency, to undermine the dependency. I don't know how they work that. I'm sure there's flexibility with it because these are large communities and there's great warmth in the teachers. But the face-to-face encounter and the dokusan relationship, the teacher has a very, I would say, astringent relationship

[12:13]

just right now, right here, what's happening. I find that pretty interesting. And it leads me to what my own experience was during this week. Is there something else? I found that when we were invited to introduce ourselves in a circle and talk about where we were at right now, everybody said something. Every story was moving, I think, and heartfelt.

[13:15]

But afterwards, I and a number of others weren't so comfortable about what we had said. There was a sense of having been exposed, maybe being ashamed of what we had said, the side that we had presented, and some regret or some uncertainty. Maybe not everybody, but some people felt like that. And I, of course, thought of how students must feel when they share something deep and troubling with their mentor and how uncertain then they feel. What did I reveal about myself and was it acceptable? Is it okay? And reflecting on this, I began to feel as if there was a part of me that was dry land and a part of me that was underwater. And the part that emerged as dry land, the part that I just happened to say in the circle,

[14:21]

was not the most interesting part. The most interesting part was the part that was underwater. And I wondered how many others felt they were underwater. That so much of our nature and being was not accessible to us or flowing or not fixed. And what that was, to me, somebody else who arises as the mountain, as form, and doesn't reveal the rivers, the flowing, and how we're all teaching classes, we're all rivers, we know that. We know that we're all underwater, that we're struggling to come up to some clarity and consciousness and awareness,

[15:27]

but the words don't reach it. And when I attempt to formulate language and to communicate in language, this is the mark. And as I worked with this, it was a colon for myself. How much is underwater? Does it have to be that way? Isn't practice to be dry land? I wasn't quite sure what other implications were for me. So many women described themselves as hidden or invisible or secret. That was interesting. I don't know if the men would do that. But a number of the women felt they had lived hidden lives or invisible lives. And we're noticing now, as they assume positions of responsibility, which were very public, what a challenge it was and how complicated

[16:29]

to become public and available to themselves. So as I was thinking about all of this, I realized that it was all a stream. It was all moving. That I wasn't just a swimmer, either going downstream or floating or swimming or going upstream, but that it was all the stream, the swimmer, and the stream were not separate. It was very clear to me. Whatever I was experiencing wasn't separate from what the entire energy of the group was. This is a remarkable group because it felt as if nobody got stuck in a particular place. A group of people practicing 20 to 30 years each. And what everybody said at the beginning, in a day or two or three, shift.

[17:35]

It was all kind of flowing through us. To experience myself as the flow, even though there is the identity with this part of the flow, but to see that, in fact, my doubts or my concerns or my questions were expressed by and matched the concerns and questions and experiences of others was pretty interesting. It's pretty interesting that this sense of separate identity and separate self and separate persona or whatever, separate ego, that keeps rearing its head is, in fact, when it is held

[18:36]

in a patient space, dissolves into the rhythm and movement of everything. It was quite wonderful to feel the dissolution of some separate... I don't know what word to use. Some separate will, some separate observing self, even though it kept popping up and back, of course. It didn't seem to have so much substance. It seemed to dissolve. You could prick it and kind of get it back down in there. At least there was this big question. There was this going back and forth. And there was a space where we could meet in that way, that whatever personal entity arose was provisional and was seen as provisional.

[19:39]

The koan that I took with me from the teaching I've been doing in Santa Cruz and Monterey was the koan of what is right livelihood. We've been studying the Eightfold Path, and I've been interpreting right, the spokes of the wheel, as liberative, non-dual, liberative understanding, liberative intention or thought, liberative action, or liberative speech, or liberative livelihood. When we talk about right livelihood or right speech, it conjures up right or wrong,

[20:45]

so we get caught on the dilemma of what's right contrasted with what's wrong. So how to work with the koan of right livelihood as non-dual livelihood, liberative livelihood. And to see that if you put it in a box, you know, the teaching of, I'm going to tie this in with what I was talking about earlier, the teaching of right livelihood or liberative livelihood is not to do work which is harmful to others, not to do anything which involves killing or stealing or dishonesty,

[21:48]

do not deal in weapons or intoxicants, or cause suffering to others like hunting or fishing, but you can't put livelihood into those boxes and then decide where everything else is liberative. In our groups down there, we have people who are working in large corporations with overseas offices and overseas manufacturing, so that we're so integrated internationally now that it was hard to know the consequences of any of our activity here. And we began to think of right livelihood in terms of right understanding, right intention,

[22:59]

and right action and right speech. And it didn't so much depend on the particular profession as how we enacted our role or relationship to the work. Did we see ourselves separate? Did we see ourselves outside the work? Could we so identify with the assignment or the task that we had a non-separate, connected, interconnected relationship, a relationship where we didn't know what our relationship was, where we didn't know what was correct or not,

[24:02]

where little by little we could bring this mind and body to the experience and explore and experiment how to be with each other in new ways, new ways that were free of conscious intention, free of conscious goals? Could we take as the work of our right livelihood that which truly sustains our life, that which truly nourishes us, and what would that be? What would be something that truly nourished this body and mind that what questions would we ask?

[25:06]

When do you feel nourished by your activity? When do you feel invigorated, enlivened by your activity, by your work, by your action, by your relationships so that you don't know anymore what the notion of right livelihood might be? It's liberative in the sense of entering into a space that's quite unknown. Katagiri Roshi used to say, Don't put your head in there. Don't create a gap and put your head in it. Toson Akiyama, when he talked, talked about his teacher or colleague who would say,

[26:10]

Take your head off and put it on the cushion next to you so that our Sazen practice could be free of the discriminations of a brain that was always working. Uchiyama Roshi, as Shohaku Okamura says, Open the hand of thought. Whatever thoughts are coming, let them go. Put your head down here. How can we... It seems to me the challenge is how do we enter our situation as the koan of our life? And what I've been feeling about this trip, about the teachings that we heard, is that they work with koans in which each student is invited to become each part of the koan. So here's an example.

[27:14]

The koan on Baizhang, on work. Rinrin asked the Master, Every day there is hard work. Who do you do it for? The Master said, There is someone who requires it. Rinrin said, Why not have him do it himself? The Master said, He has no tools. What if we take this koan as the koan of our livelihood or effort? Every day there is hard work. Who do you do it for?

[28:25]

There is someone who requires it. Rinrin said, Why not have him do it himself? Baizhang. This conversation is happening with Baizhang. Baizhang says, He has no tools. So Norman Fisher, in the Winter of 97 issue of Turning Wheel, has an article on Zen work in which he speaks to this koan in an interesting way. We work hard, Norman says, because there is someone who requires it. Who is that someone? We can say all beings. We can say reality itself. We can say Buddha.

[29:29]

But none of these is quite accurate. Someone requires it. And maybe it is best to say we don't know who that someone is. Why doesn't this person do it herself? Because we are her tools. Our body, our mind, our whole life are her tools. So we throw ourselves into our work with a lot of verve and joy. And to my surprise, last Sunday, Muotai at Mount Tremper started her Dharma talk with this case and talked about this case

[30:34]

and commented, and said, the reason, let's try again, when you say she has no tools or someone has tools, why doesn't he do it himself? Because he has no tools. In order to have tools, you have to be separate from tools. You have to be separate from the situation. And that is not realizing the koan. If you yourself are the tool, and you reach everywhere, your mind, your heart, your stomach, your feelings,

[31:36]

your energy, that is the person. That's the person that we are responding to. There is someone who requires it. It's interesting, who is it that requires us to work? Something in us that a call for something from the universe, a call from your heart, a call from your deepest intention, your deepest vow? And what standards do we have for our work? Why did we come here to Zen Center to work? What were we looking for here? What are the work opportunities here?

[32:40]

What inside us requires us to be here, invites us to be here? And what are our tools? What are your tools? What do you bring? What do you bring? What do you bring that you don't even know you bring? Besides your specific skills or gifts, what do you bring that you don't even acknowledge? Because you didn't work to develop it. It's just your nature. So that's an example of working with the issue of

[33:46]

livelihood or work in an integrated way, in an interconnected or non-separate way where there's no distance. Yes. This is wonderful. Come on. There's not enough space here for everything. Not enough space. There's another poem about wild geese that meant a lot to me, and I don't know if I can bring it to you and have it mean very much to me, but her presentation was very powerful, and it's again speaking to this point of right this minute, right here, where are you? What's happening? Not yesterday.

[34:48]

Not next week. Not what you want to have happen, what you wish were happening, but right now, even that which you can't express. Can you stay with that? Can you stay with that feeling of something stuck in your throat that you can't bring it forth? That's your practice. That's the practice of this moment. It's not all clarity. It's also not all confusion. It's not all ambivalence. It's a wonderful flurry of works. So here's this story. This is about Bai Zhang, who's a very important teacher in the Zen tradition,

[35:50]

following the sixth ancestor, and he was responsible for changing the Zen community, the monastic code from India to China. He really made it Chinese, according to this text, and he organized a service elite instead of a close student, privileged elite. He's the one who said a day of no work is a day of not eating. He introduced work into his own communities instead of the system of not working, which had been happening before. So the monks were not being subsidized

[36:51]

by the generosity of the laity, but were going around food, touring around fields, taking care of themselves. Apparently there were abuses that grew out of the system of giving money, giving support to the monks. According to clearly here, they became, it was corrupt because donors would give to the monks in order to get favors from them. So it was a patronage system, and Bai Zhang cut through this, ended that system, and introduced work so the community could be self-supporting. And Clear's introduction says these Chan teachings, and this was in the 6th century, 7th century,

[37:52]

7th and 8th century, humanized Chinese Buddhism, emphasizing practical application beyond theory, giving up an idealized image of a superhuman Buddha. And, this is new to me, and humanitarian works of charity, education, and service in the world. So here's an example of engaged Buddhism back in the 8th century, Tang Dynasty China. And Bai Zhang's teaching emphasized suiting the teaching to current needs, not allowing it to become dead words. And he set up the Dharma Hall, the Meditation Hall,

[38:53]

as the center of the monastic community to demonstrate that the teaching was more than letters, beads, and images. The teaching was about realizing for yourself the liberated life. Watching your own mind and body through your own teacher, not dependent on the teaching of others, not dependent on books and lectures, but your own experience. Then, cutting through this wandering mind, seeing your perceptions and feelings and impulses as the story of your life, seeing the stories that we continuously generate. I'd forgotten that Bai Zhang

[39:58]

was such an innovator. One for our time, I think. Anyway, there's this wonderful story about page 19, Wild Ducks. They were out for a walk, Matsu and Bai Zhang. Matsu was his teacher, very famous. Zen teacher. And they saw a flock of wild ducks go by. Bai Zhang said, Look, Matsu said, What's that? And Bai Zhang said, Wild ducks. Some of the translations say wild geese. Matsu said, Where have they gone? Bai Zhang said, Flown away. Flown away. Matsu then turned around,

[40:59]

grabbed Bai Zhang's nose, and tugged at it. And Bai Zhang let out a cry. And Matsu said, Do you still say flown away? With these words, Bai Zhang had insight. Then, Bai Zhang returned to the attendants' quarters, and he was crying pitifully. And another monk who worked there as an attendant asked him, Are you thinking of your parents? Is that why you're crying? And Bai Zhang said, No. And the attendant said, Has someone reviled you? And Bai Zhang said, No. Then why are you crying? Bai Zhang said, My nose was grabbed by the great teacher, and the pain hasn't stopped.

[42:01]

And the attendant said, What happened? What didn't you realize? And Bai Zhang said, Go ask the teacher. So the attendant went and asked Matsu, What incident happened that attendant Bai Zhang failed to record with? He is crying in the other room. Please explain to me. And Matsu said, Indeed Bai Zhang did understand. And he told the attendant to go ask him. So the attendant went back and said to Bai Zhang, Matsu says you understand. He told me to ask you himself. The master then laughed. Bai Zhang just laughed. And the attendant said,

[43:06]

Just a moment ago you were crying. Now you're laughing. He didn't understand. Bai Zhang said, Just then I was crying. Right now I'm laughing. The attendant was at a loss. It was a little more exchange between them. And then Matsu and Bai Zhang had another conversation. Bai Zhang said, Yesterday you grabbed my nose and it hurt. This is the next day I guess. And Matsu said, Yesterday where did you set your mind? Bai Zhang said, My nose doesn't hurt anymore today.

[44:07]

Matsu said, You have deeply understood yesterday's event. The master bowed and withdrew. So it's interesting what's going on here. They're playing a little bit. Tweaking noses, creating pain. Where was yesterday's mind? Where was yesterday? Yesterday's pain is gone. Yesterday I was crying. Today I'm laughing. Can we live in such a way as to not carry yesterday's pain today, yesterday's confusion today, be with whatever is arising now? What has flown away?

[45:19]

Where is the mind that flew away? What was yesterday's mind? What was yesterday? Where is yesterday? These stories and this style of teaching I found very engaging and provocative for me. So maybe that's enough. The teaching of this school is not to make a thing out of any event, not to make a thing that we put in our pocket and remember and bring out on the next suitable occasion. And this Dharma teacher who was giving a talk Sunday said, No thing.

[46:22]

Something like that. It may be a good thing, but it's not better than no thing. The teaching here is how do you not make your experience a thing? How do you not crystallize it or make it concrete? How do you not focus on it, extract it from causes and conditions, separate it, wrap our minds around it and get caught by it? Getting caught is one thing, objectifying the event is another. Maybe I can stop now and if there's some question or comment we might have some conversation. Yes, Jim.

[47:23]

There are several firms here getting together. How is it just to get together? Why do we get together? Is that your question? Well, these meetings have been happening for years, about ten years. Just to stay in touch? Yes. I think many teachers feel isolated and it's refreshing to connect with each other, to see what other people are doing, to develop friendships. Before these meetings happened, in the Soto tradition, I don't know about Rinzai, but each community developed separately. So the San Francisco Zen Center community developed separately from Los Angeles Zen Center community. We had a little more contact with Minneapolis because of Katagiri Roshi's relationship to us,

[48:27]

but not so much contact with the Rinzai tradition at all. Didn't know the people, didn't know what koan practice was, didn't know how they organized their communities, how they do the teaching, what services they use. So we're evolving, we are collectively evolving, American Buddhism, Western Buddhism. And some of the centers are more traditional than the others. Daibosatsu is very traditional. It's still headed by a Japanese person, so it's quite formal. Mount Tremper has accommodated to be in a Western environment, working with both monastics and lay people, so it has a very flexible, very strict discipline program, but also flexible, so lay people can come and go. It's quite exciting to see the forms

[49:29]

that the Dharma is taking as people bring their intelligence and their own questions, their own experience to the teaching role. Dada Luri, for instance, has spelled out at Mount Tremper, who's the abbot there, has spelled out the ten stages of the path for both monastics and lay people because he believes that the Western mind needs to know where it is and where it's going and what's going to come next. And that's so different from Suzuki Roshi's way in our own teaching style, which is there's no stages, there's no path. Here we are. So it's interesting to kind of consider the usefulness of that, all the materials that he's developed and how it works in people's lives. We don't know, you know.

[50:33]

We just did a visit to that center. But the people that we met felt very engaged, responsive, very intelligent, helpful. Yes? Your final quote reminds me of this other koan that Steve Weintraub was talking about. This weekend. About the ox and the cart. Which one do you hit? You hit the cart. So how... I'm attempting an experiment with that a little bit. How do you hit the cart without turning hitting the cart into just another way of hitting the ox? Hitting the cart is hitting the body? Is that how you explained it? Hitting the cart is the no thing. It's sort of like putting your head on the side, you know. And finding a way to do nothing

[51:34]

as opposed to doing something which is hitting the ox. So how do you do that without turning it into just another something? Turning it into just another agenda? Yeah, how do you do that? How do you hold that question? How do you experiment with that question? How do you bring your mind and its categories and its intention to that question and exhaust all of that and then see what's left? I think the only way you take on any of these, whether it's Mu or the question of tools and who does the work, you bring your discriminating intelligence to it. And then how far does that take you? And then where does that lead you? And where does the next question come up? Because everything that you try

[52:35]

that comes up in your mind leads to something else. There's the other side, the part that's underwater, the part that first appears, the part that's land, the part that's water. One of the wonderful quotes that she did, she quoted somebody. When you commit yourself to something, committing yourself means what resources do you commit? Committing yourself to something doesn't mean believing in something. What do you commit? Do you commit your heart? Do you commit your mind? Do you commit your intelligence? Do you commit your life to this question? How alive is that question for you? If it's just a kind of curious question that you dart in and out of occasionally, then it's not going to really grab you. But if your life is engaged by that question,

[53:37]

if it resonates with something deep in you that has to be solved, that's kind of burning a hole in you because your life is right there, it won't let you go. And that's when the koan will become one and something will happen. So then, you exhaust yourself as a moment of frustration, and out of that, well, there's a lot of frustration, and then there's a moment of relaxation. It's that, the swimming in the river. That's not exactly a technique. Now you work really, really hard for an hour, then you take an hour off, then you take 10 minutes off, and then you really beat yourself for 20 minutes, then you go for a walk around the block, then you go to a movie. It's not like that. Each person engages with it in a way in which it's alive and meaningful

[54:39]

and necessary for you. You have an idea that, you know, it's said that you exhaust the intellect, and then when the intellect lets go, something else arises, something that's beyond what the mind can figure out. I think it happens in different ways for different people at different times, depending upon the urgency of the question and how broadly it engages you. I mean, I could tell you all kinds of things, the way I work with things like this. It just becomes total. Take it into the body. Totally take it into the body until it's a body experience. It's not just a mind experience. Become the cart. Become the whip. Become the person who's...

[55:40]

Become the horse. Become every part of that. That's how they work with koans. And that's how we work with the genjo koan. That's how I was working with this business of being underwater. I had to become all parts of a situation to see beyond my idea of what was going on, to feel it more completely. Yes? Okay. Yes? When you talk about service, you know, that different Zen communities are providing, if they are. I know there's like a lot of talk

[56:40]

about early Chinese Zen monks and services. I mean, sometimes they're kind of described as kind of civil engineers and kind of Red Cross workers constantly. The exceptional ones providing service in China. And I was wondering if there was any discussion of service that the communities are providing at all. Are you talking about social service? Well, yeah. Working with... Community service for the community. We talked about death and dying, working in hospices, working with AIDS patients, mostly around death and dying. I was out for a whole day with my runny nose. I don't know, was there something else, Blanche, that I missed in that area? Not particularly. It came up. One instance or another, but our focus was on

[57:42]

death and dying was one focus of one day's discussion. And monastic training and lay training and how they were similar and how they were different was the focus of another day's discussion. And financial aspects of society and fundraising was the focus of another day. Each year, we sort of take a different group of subjects to focus on. Otherwise, we'd be all over the place. So there was, other than how working with death and dying becomes service to the Sangha and to people inside the Sangha, in, for example, hospice work or being, responding to a call

[58:47]

from a hospital to someone who wants to be a priest. That kind of service came up in that discussion. But for me, just reading this in this book today, sayings of beings of Bajong and to see that he encouraged or introduced that aspect into his community is wonderful because we're getting into engaged Buddhism down in Santa Cruz. They've been doing it down in Monterrey a little bit longer. There's a tradition. I mean, I've always thought that from the Asian perspective, it was more like just working on yourself rather than the social dimension. And here apparently in China, there was something else happening. But I think there are many

[59:47]

groups that are doing service work, engaged Buddhism, working with the homeless, collecting food, working with kids, doing tutoring, various projects like that in Santa Cruz. We just didn't get into that. People talk about, I understand that they're going to put sex on the agenda next time, sexuality or something. So that's... I wasn't there for that one. One big topic at a time, I guess. I think that in a way that the monastery community approached and presented monastic practice, it was a very strong element of monastic practice and service to the community. And a very strong feeling that the monastics

[60:50]

serve the lay community, which comes to notice they do a lot of their... a lot of their comfort sessions and workshops. And that's seen very much as service to the community. Do you mean maintaining the monastery so that others can use it? Is that what you mean? Providing the matrix for people to come and practice and to come and study all of the various workshops they presented. Thank you very much. Oh, yes? I wonder if next time you come you might talk a little bit about women, the kind of activities

[61:53]

that go on with, say for example, one-day sittings for women. What would that be like? The value of things like that. I know that would probably take a long time, so maybe next time we come back you could talk about that. Could you tell me something of your interest in that topic? Well, my interest is specifically a woman's practice. A woman's one-day sitting. What would that mean? You see, I've never identified exclusively as a woman sitting with other women and not with a mixed group. Like two communities in Santa Cruz it's about half and half. In Monterey it's, I don't know, 70-30, 80-20 more women. So I don't develop special programs

[62:55]

just for women. There hasn't been a request for that. I know Fu and Tia and some other people at Green Gulch did a workshop for women only. Is that right? Down at Tassajara? Berkeley does, yeah. Hmm? Well, when I had a women teacher it's a little different. It's almost like you're... I think women's sittings came up because women felt a need for exploring a woman's unique experience, which since we had received the teaching from Japan

[63:56]

from male teachers we've experienced it somewhat differently. My own teaching is different in significant ways, I think, about the posture, how I work with posture, from how Suzuki Roshi, from what Mel says Suzuki Roshi said. So Mel and I get into some conversations about how to work with people's posture and zazen. So I think what was interesting was when women have made changes, innovations in their session schedules they all say it was scary to do because they were breaking with their lineage or breaking with tradition and creating a new form. And that's scary because we've been imbued, we're embedded in a form

[64:57]

and we're carrying a form in this tradition. So to break it you don't know if you have permission. You have to give yourself permission to experiment. It's interesting. And I think women are finding they need to do that more because their experience of working with their bodies requires it. There's been a request in Santa Cruz to stop using karaoke as a way of being more relevant to American life. Karaoke's not so relevant to your home meals. And I asked this question at the meeting and it turns out that many groups they never used karaoke. It's quite interesting. Kepler Roshi used plates and I think forks and spoons and knives. Shasta Abbey didn't use karaoke. In Syracuse

[66:01]

they used plates and forks and spoons. So what had seemed a kind of sacrosanct part of the tradition to me, I didn't know if I could so I enjoyed so much the give and take of the service, serving of food or Yogi's Town. That's been, people have moved on from that and have already adapted to Western forms. That'll never happen here. We have these beautiful early Yogi's sets that Richard is helping us make and we've created a lot of them down there and sold them as fundraisers. Maybe we'll have to have special sessions for only Yogi at meals only. That's what I can imagine happening once we switch because I think we will switch

[67:02]

at least part of the time, maybe not every meal but part of the time. Yeah. I heard that years ago, a lot of years ago, Stuart Grant gave Zen Center the Ecology Center of the Year Award because of Grant and Ishwa. Stuart Grant. Apparently this one place doesn't use Setsu sticks. I thought it was Daibosatsu. They wash their first bowls with their thumbs. That was a little hard to imagine. They're interesting. They have the most elegant style, most elegant forms there but they don't use Setsu sticks. And then they drink. So you can see that whatever it is we're doing here

[68:02]

is just one variation. And translations are different. The translations of the Heart Sutra, Version of Difference and Unity. We're just trying to develop a committee now to standardize the service so as you go from one community to the other, you'll understand. You'll be able to chant without the chant card but I needed the chant card and Trenton had changed the form. It was the same chant but they had different translations. Thank you very much.

[68:48]

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