There's the television, there's all kinds of like sexy business and violence and all kinds of things going on there all the time. And if people add to that not being able to control their mind or know much about how their mind works and then all this taggy-toogy business going on all around and it will all turn upside down and everything and it violence. Therefore if you have people who feel, they and or their teachers feel that for their particular progress they need to take all of their energy and put it in a certain way which will include abstention from sexuality if that should be the case and they wish to practice that way if they can get a place where they have a very carefully protected and cultivated culture or environment a separate kind of culture from the ordinary culture

[01:10]

then they will be able to take that energy and use it in the other ways that they want sublimated ways that they want very easily in such a protected environment. If they want to visit some people their families from outside or other visitors want to visit then they must meet in a house that's between the two walls with a senior nun, monshu, you know not really called the proctor type, you know, disciplinarian, head nun, nondisciplinarian in strict attendance. He's saying that in Tibet there's this nunnery. It's the only way you can talk to someone if you happen to know someone or wish to visit someone who's a nun in that monastery. Therefore if you want to do it you have to go and you sit there and the head anti-disciplinarian

[02:28]

nondisciplinarian is sitting there and she hears everything that is said and you have your conversation and then the nun goes back in there and you go back out there and there's no buddy-buddy activity. So the mother of the nuns can go inside or sisters also. No one else can get inside there. If someone of importance or for some special reason wants to meet the images in the temple there or pay homage in that monastery then they are led strictly in by the senior disciplinarian and led strictly back out. Therefore celibacy is not difficult if one develops a controlled situation where what

[03:41]

one sees with the eye and hears with the ear and says with the mouth is under some kind of control. So that's the story of celibacy. There is a small celibacy movement or I don't really want to call it a movement in this country where people who are not particularly associated with any particular religious institution will become celibate and for a year perhaps. I'm reminded of the taking vows for a day, you know that kind of great version that's mentioned. And I've had friends who've done that and there's research in a book written on the subject. And evidently I haven't done it myself but it's an interesting thing to do. Energy has become available. It is something that the people who do it consider worthwhile. If you do take a vow of celibacy and it becomes known you get a certain kind of attention

[04:45]

from post sexes that is not predicted usually when you take that. So I wanted you to know that even in an uncontrolled situation such as this country people will become celibate and find it very interesting and rewarding to be so. And don't consider losing something as much as gaining some experience. Thank you. Thank you.

[06:07]

No. No. He feels that he's thankful to you for telling him about that and he finds that interesting and he says that also of course that celibacy in its definition of brahmacharya that is to say living in tune or in orientation toward liberation is of course finally a kind of attitude. The actual act itself has to be combined with an attitude to be true brahmacharya. There's quite a difference between being de facto celibate and having advocating vows and intention of celibacy. And I wonder if someone could address himself to that. And then I also wanted to ask kind of your view. I heard maybe third or fourth hand that you have stated that you would only ordain as

[07:21]

priests people who have taken vows of celibacy. And I wonder if that is the case. I am not the order of them to be celibacy. But I tell them what is the best way of passing through the life to be free to liberation. In other words nirvana or whatever. If you want to have real freedom as a priest life what is the best way. I say the best way is such and such. But it depends on you. If you want to choose this way or that way that's okay. But I have to. But before I think you have ordination I think you are better single. Because if you have ordination and then try to practice it.

[08:24]

If you are married it's very difficult to practice. Concentrate on the practicing. That's why I want to say as much as possible to have a single person to be ordained. I am not the order of them to be celibacy. I just tell them what is the real situation of the Buddha Shakyamuni Maitreya. Does that mean that after somebody has been a priest for several years you don't mind so much as they get married? I don't say so either. I always continually say what is the best way. That's what I can tell. Not my ideas. If I say Buddha's teaching in terms of my idea I have to say many things. After ordination you can get married etc. You shouldn't do it. But I don't want to say this way. What I can tell is this is the best way.

[09:26]

That's all. Mayuri, do you have a question? About two years ago I saw Kono Taizoroshi from Rinzai. A colleague came here and he went to Tassajara and saw the married monk kissing in public. He was quite puzzled. He did not know what to think about that. But overall sexual energy in the monastery is so much more relaxed than his monastery in Japan. Because the old celibate monks always think about the women. Therefore their energy is wasted and they can't really know how to deal with women when they come. So that I thought was very interesting by observing our practice here. That was one comment I wanted to tell.

[10:28]

Another thing was something Branch mentioned and you Bob mentioned. I love to support monks' practice very much. You don't have to call it monks' practice, but pure practice in this country. But I feel very confused about the situation now in our center. Only I know about Zen Center. The way I feel confused about was when the Begaroshi sexual misconduct happened. The way people treated each other and the way people treated him was so unkind. I felt very upset by it. Because to me that wouldn't be the model for treating each other.

[11:30]

At the monastery I wanted people to show us how to act to each other. In that kind of case, in that kind of very important moment arises. How all these ordained people act to each other. And if I felt very good about it, I would support it more than ever. In that point I lost the intention to support Zen Center. I haven't been sitting with you because it was too noisy. The mind was too noisy. I felt it was much quieter in my home, being myself sitting. That's why I lost support to Zen Center. I think what Bob mentioned, I would love to support monks studying Dharma. Concentrating on that, not taking care of the field and the financial part of it.

[12:35]

I feel I come from a traditional lay family. We've been supporting temples in Japan for quite many years. It's our pleasure to do it. So please do well so that you can show us some good conduct. Bob, one thing about all this that has been brought up. I've always thought of celibacy... I have no doubts that you could be liberated quicker if you were celibate. I wasn't saying... As simple as your life is, I'm just saying it was unlikely it was going to happen. I know the situation here. But it seems to me that one of the main... No, no, I didn't think about that. I know the situation in Zen Center. I was making a joke.

[13:36]

But it seems to me that the big deal about it is that you have to live with somebody of the opposite sex. In fact, if you're having sex or not, it's dealing with the opposite sex. If you have children, it's all about responsibilities. There's this whole big area of relating and all that. Is that, could you ask Rupshe, if that's considered not just the sex aspect, but the responsibilities and also the tense relationship that happens between men and women where they, you know, drive each other crazy and strangle each other and things? But what about that? Is that part of what you're... Is that considered in... I mean, we've just been talking about it as sex. Is that... and there are little breakdowns of things. Is that part of the reason for being celibate? I don't understand. I don't understand.

[14:57]

No. No. No. Of course. Of course. Of course. The celibacy part is only part of the larger elements, which was known traditionally as coming out of the home, moving from home to homelessness, which means a person's choice and involves changing one's dress, changing one's name, changing one's sense of relationship to living beings,

[16:00]

and involves a notion, a sense of the invalidity for at least that person of carrying on the parental, sort of the family lineage archetypes, reproducing them by, you know, becoming like one's parents and then being children, having children and sort of keeping up a certain kind of stream of behavior and a stream of patterns that are handed down in a family, and saying that that home is something imprisoning and not conducive to liberation, not that useful for living beings, abandoning therefore all of that totally in addition to sex, completely sex is not that much of a part of it, and in order to relate to all beings in a certain kind of a way and put all of one's energies into becoming born in a new family, in a family oriented towards enlightenment rather than a family oriented towards preserving the genetic lineage. And so of that, the sexual act is only sort of one key core element of it, but sexuality itself, the whole notion of keeping embedded in a certain genetic lineage

[17:01]

in a sense of genetic identity, you know, ego, identity is totally interconnected to family identities and archetypes, of course. So it's a rupture with all of that, you're quite right, and therefore, of course, is the answer. Thank you very much. I'd like two more questions, and we have all day tomorrow, so we can go on. Did you wish to say, Covan, and then I'll call on Susan and this gentleman for the two final questions. Covan? There was a question in Bendowa that the practice of zazen is only for monks and nuns, and Dogen Zenji spoke of the practice of zazen is essential.

[18:15]

It doesn't choose people. Sitting is for everybody. Young and old, married or unmarried, sitting doesn't choose the practice people. And the recognition of being laymen or laywomen or becoming monk and nun is up to them. Through the recognition of their own desire to be one of the four.

[19:24]

And even laymen, laywomen can also wear the monk's robe if they wish to do so, because there is no discrimination of monk's clothes and layman's clothes, which means Buddha's teaching is to everybody. For practicers, the teaching reveals itself to them equally, and people receive it with their capacity. The robes we wear is not too warm,

[21:06]

because when one wants to wear it, it is simply transmitted as the best luck for the practicer to sustain their practice, inside and outside. The one who wears it practices with it, the one who sees it practices with it. And it is stitched barely. One straight robe, five stripes of robe,

[22:08]

seven stripes of robe, and it goes to 84,000 stripes of robes, and mist becomes your robe, wind becomes your robe, and the field of blossom becomes your robe. So observing the precepts, I don't understand the discussion of who becomes a celibate. From what does the next generation appear?

[23:13]

From what do we have to protect and nourish the pure earnest wish to continue to practice? I think that's actually a nice place to stop. Let us offer our next chant to each other, to our teachers, to all of us.

[24:14]

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