So when we do meditation, people come and sit cross-legged. And it sounds easy, but Ron has done that. Is it easy or challenging? It's the hardest thing you can do, to just sit. So, he says it's the hardest thing you've ever done? It's really the most challenging thing. Are you saying to do nothing or to just sit? They tend to be the same thing. It's also a very profound question. But it's, you can't do nothing.

[01:02]

So you might wander, just wander? Or you try to blank it out? Try to think of nothing? Well... Concentrate on one thing? Yeah, concentrate on one thing, which is your posture. Posture? Because we're usually moving around. There's nothing wrong with that. Moving around is our nature. Nothing stops moving. Even though you try to sit still, everything is still moving and changing. And how you deal with a world that's constantly moving and changing is what everybody's practice is. But you get a different sense of that when you try and sit still. very different sense. You see things from the other side.

[02:03]

Is that the posture that you, the way you meditate? Oh, well, right now I have my leg crossed, but basically, yeah. Is it bad? No. No, bad posture. So is there any other teachings that go along with this? What's the process? The volumes of... I mean, is there a god or is there a... In Buddhism? Yeah. In Buddhism, there's no deity. Buddha is not a deity. Although, there's always a tendency to deify Buddha in Buddhism. There's a tendency to deify Buddha, but... Deity is worshiping something external. External, yeah. There's always that tendency. But, strictly speaking, Buddha is not God. It's the same. Yeah, it's a way of life. Well, Shinto is different. Shinto is kind of a nature worship of the Japanese, where Buddhism comes from India and China, through China and Southeast Asia and Tibet.

[03:20]

To realize our nature, which is to realize that nature, which is common to everything. That's what Buddhism is about. Let me go at the question a different way, going back to John's question. It'll be Grove's question and Steve's question too. They're asking, if you get confidence from this practice, rather than resignation, And if you get confidence from this practice, more confidence than resignation, how do you get it? How does this practice give you more confidence if you do get confidence from this thing? Well, I don't know what you mean by resignation exactly. Let me restate it a little bit. We in this room see confidence and see accomplishment through real accomplishment, seeing our businesses do something.

[04:34]

We can try to focus for a second on the idea that perhaps you would sense accomplishment, and maybe I can even relate to this, accomplishment for some goal pattern that we can't totally embrace or comprehend. Does it go that direction, or is it a total inward focus? I'm trying not to state this in a negative fashion, because to me, I guess, I have trouble relating to it or seeing it as a total inward focus when I withdraw from life and what we term as responsibility. That's a good question. There is a withdrawing, but there's also a going out. And I think this is the part that makes it seem strange. Mostly, in usual life, we just project outward, which is the dynamic of our life, is to project outward and accomplish.

[05:51]

But in our practice, we also retreat. as well as go out. So, back and forth, this is the part that most people don't experience. What most people experience is just the going out, but not the retreating, to experience the basis of our life, in a pure sense. our practice is to withdraw and experience pure basis without any accomplishment, not accomplishment, without any materialistic goal. And then to proceed forward in the materialistic world.

[06:55]

So it's not really a withdrawal from life, it's Seeing life from both sides. How does that give you more confidence? Well, instead of being just driven by life, getting to know yourself better and be more comfortable with yourself so that when you do go out into that big wide world, be it the materialistic one or spiritual one or however you're placed in that world, you are more at ease. Yes, you always know where you are. So in a sense, however we are, we must have solitude, we must have a certain type of peace

[08:00]

peace of mind in order to do the things that we do and charge ourselves up and be the people that we are. So maybe we are doing this, but in a very different way to your way. Yes, everyone is actually doing it, but we're not all aware of what we're doing. That's your meditation. What it is to clean up your pipes and just let go of the stress part of anything. That's a part of the whole process, too. I think that that's related, yes. That is related. But if it was just relaxing, there are plenty of ways to do that. But that is definitely related. But in a profound way, it's actually letting go of everything completely. and coming down to the basic nature without any idea about things.

[09:06]

Because we always have some idea about things, some partial way of seeing things. And when our mind is always thinking about our advantage, then we see everything from the partiality, from the partial view of our desire or what we want. And it's pretty hard to see things just the way they really are. Depends on how you're looking at it. Right, it depends on how you're looking at it. Right, and if you're looking at it from your own, from any point of view, that's partial. Partial to the person who's looking at it. Partial to the person who's looking at it. Right. That's a pretty good prejudice to have. Well, we need to see things from some standpoint. Yeah, but how can you see things from your own point of reference? By giving up your point of reference. That's true.

[10:09]

Which of course turns out to be the biggest challenge for every business leader in the world. How do you give up your point of reference? Without assuming one. It's very hard to let go. Not ever, not never. No, no. But whatever point of view you're taking, when you reach a place where there's no point of view, where you give up all points of view, then from that clarity you can take a point of view. But you know that this is a point of view. You don't say, this is it. How do you know that you're there? Well... You have to have a point of view about that. That's something that I can't tell you exactly. You have to do it yourself. You come back to zero.

[11:09]

So this retreating is to come back to zero. And then it's like the equation is like there's a line. And then there's zero. And then there's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Any way you want it to be. You know? You create your life. But you keep coming back to zero and creating whatever you want to create. You're saying you're recreating your life every time you meditate? Yeah, you're recreating your life every time. You just create a board with yourself? No, you don't. If you recreate your life, does that mean you erase the tapes and you start over? You do that, yes. Erase the tape. You'll never have to worry about erasing your tapes. It's not like you come back to zero and then you find yourself a little baby.

[12:14]

Although, that's good if you can do that. It's pretty hard to erase the tapes. No, you shouldn't be afraid of erasing everything. Yeah, well, we have this, a lot of fear about hanging on, you know. What will happen if my mind stops? What will happen if no thoughts come into my mind? And that's very fearful. Not for everybody, but for a lot of people. Does this happen only in meditation? Or is this a state that... Well, it's not some special state of mind. I think that's what you have to be... you have to clarify. It's not some special state of mind. Our states of mind are constantly changing. Constantly changing.

[13:16]

And when you come back to zero, that's zero state of mind. But, you know, even when you're meditating, there's thoughts coming into your mind. It's pretty hard to stop thoughts. So, you don't try to stop thoughts, but you just let them come up. Because thinking random thoughts is not what you're supposed to be doing. When you do meditation, you just watch your Take care of your posture and put all your effort into posture. Your whole body and mind is unified in just one act. And when your whole body and mind is completely unified in one act with nothing left out, then there's no dissatisfaction. Even though it looks like you're not doing anything, but you're doing the most dynamic thing you've ever done.

[14:19]

It's like a top, you know, when you spin a top. The top looks like nothing's happening when it's really spinning. When the top is really spinning, it looks like it's standing still. And that's exactly what meditation is. It looks like it's standing still, but it's spinning in such a harmonious balance and complete absorption that You can't get bored if there's only one thing. If everything is complete. There's a way to find out about all of this, which is just to do something today. Is there any feelings about that? Learning how to do it? Just doing five minutes of it? That was a question.

[15:25]

Hey, I'm game for anything. I'm going to smoke some joints, too. All right. Let's go for it. You got some joint smell? Rowe, you got to have some stuff on you. At what stage in this development of yours did you get married? And what motivated you to get married? Well, my wife was a student And what motivated me to get married was that I thought my wife was quite a wonderful person before she was my wife. And we were attracted to each other. And we got married. And when was this? Was this when you were in San Francisco? Fifteen years ago. Oh yeah, I'm still married and I have a four-year-old son.

[16:31]

I don't know how that happened. Yeah, she's a nurse. She works in the intensive care, premature intensive care unit at Children's Hospital. Was that a big choice, a big decision for you to get married? Because that was facing some responsibility there. Was that a big decision for you? No. I've always had responsibility. See, I think you think that I don't face responsibility. And by my not taking on a lot of materialistic responsibilities, that I don't face responsibility. Actually, my life is tremendously busy. From morning to night, it's continuously busy with responsibilities. I'm on the board of directors usually, and corporations meet once or twice a year.

[17:37]

But we meet constantly in Zen Center. And I'm on the board of directors of my Zen Center, as well as the San Francisco Zen Center. And I'm the chairman of the Abbots Council of the San Francisco Zen Center. And I talk to people. constantly, who are coming to me for instruction. And I give lectures at Green Gulch, and I go to Tassajara, and I give lectures, excuse me, lectures a week sometimes. And I have to also take care of my family, and I take, my wife works, now she's working every other weekend, so I have to take care of my kid every other weekend, and also take care of the practice, on the weekends. Weekends are our biggest, busiest times. And counsel people and take care of business, endless newsletters and... Right.

[18:43]

Actually, you know, I'm up to here with the responsibilities, which I have to... I think Steve's question is, without the kind of income that many people in this room generate, how can you provide for your family? How can you provide security? Well, I'll tell you how. Is that something about what you're talking about? Yeah, I mean, the point where earlier you had said that no one was going to give, you know, you didn't go aspiring for money, it was gaining the money. You know, you had free room, board, $150 a month. Right, but since then, People, well, I realize that I'm making almost $20,000 a year. And the point that I'm, about my financial life is that it meets my needs. In other words, it, provision is, keeps expanding to meet my needs.

[19:47]

And so it's not a problem. And also, now that my wife is working, she's making a lot of money, you know, $15 an hour. Actually, she went to nursing school for four years and got pregnant at the same time. So we've been going through her going to nursing school, which means that she come over every night, study, you know, and then go back to school the next day. And then we had Daniel, a boy, and at the same time, right, and my responsibilities at the Zen Center increased, you know, tremendously at the same time. So sometimes I get behind, I'm always behind.

[20:49]

I always got this load of stuff. But the way I deal with it is that I just focus on one thing at a time. Sometimes I have to focus on, it seems like I'm focusing on five things at one time. But it's enjoyable, I enjoy it. Sometimes I wish it'd be great to just go out and work in the garden or make a table or do something like that. But that's not what my life, Commitments. Yeah, commitments. Responsibilities. Responsibilities. And I feel, well, I'm going to get down to that, you know. But in the back of my mind, I know that I probably won't. Because my responsibilities are accumulating even faster. You know, more and more. And I feel good about the way I've taken

[21:49]

about the way I've been able to go along with my family and with the other responsibilities. I have a lot of confidence because I've never blamed my family for giving me a lot more responsibility. I've never blamed my child for entering into the situation and making life difficult because he doesn't actually make Even though I have to put in a lot of time and effort with him, it's really enjoyable to me. I wouldn't trade it for anything. What kind of topics? You said you may speak three times a week. Well, there's a lot of aspects to Buddhism. There's the academic side, and then there's the practice side.

[22:53]

And mostly I'm talking to householders. Householders? Yeah. Well, I mean, laypeople. Our practice is for laypeople. And so I'm, you know, always involved with how to help laypeople practice in their daily life. How to bring the practice to their daily life. That's what I talk about a lot, most of the time, in various ways. And because lay people come, you know, people live in the community, and they come for daily meditation. And the point of that is that they complete that through their activity, which is what I was talking about, the coming back and forth. They complete their meditation practice through their activity. In real life. In their unreal life. Let's take a short break and then come back and see what this is all about.

[24:02]

About five minutes. Do you ever raise your voice directly? Sometimes, yes. Yeah, it's only when people are disrespectful to me. To you. Very quiet sheltered life. Is it meditating? Yeah, it's meditating. Do I crush our legs? Well, I don't want to do something you don't want to do. But you don't have to cross your legs. You can do it sitting in a chair.

[25:02]

These aren't the best chairs because they're a little overstuffed. Well, OK. You don't have to cross your legs. Just sit on your cup. Maybe push your chair back a little bit, so that you don't have to lean on the table. The most important thing about, the most fundamental thing is that you're not leaning on anything, like I am now. My fundamental thing about sitting is what are you depending on? What's sustaining you? Yourself.

[26:03]

So, what did you say? Yourself. Whatever that is. What's that? It's okay, you don't have to answer. But it's a good question. It's a good question. What is myself? That's the fundamental question. So anyway, what... without leaning on anything is fundamental. Does that include the floor doctor? Well, you know, that's right. What are you depending on? Depending on, if you're sitting down, you're depending on your seat, right? And if your feet are on the floor, you're depending on that, right? Okay, so you know that. You have to stand on something, right? But you don't have to lean on anything. this may be enough, you know, just without leaning back on the back of your chair. So, if you see how, if you can sit up straight by pushing the small of your back forward.

[27:20]

Can you do that? Push the small of your back forward so that You feel that your support is coming from your behind and small of your back. And then just sitting up straight with your head on top of your spine. And you can put your hands on your knees like this. That's kind of a relaxing position. And just allow yourself to Feel your back, your lower back being your support and stretching your back. Just concentrate on that. See what's happening in your back. Just put all your attention completely into your back, especially your lower back. I don't know if you have any back problems.

[28:21]

And then, without putting, lift your head up so that you're not, your head's not leaning forward, but it's on top of your spine, because if your head is leaning forward, then you're putting a strain on your back. So your head, you know, it's a big object, and it weighs, I don't know how much it weighs, but. Well, there's some tension and relaxation at the same time. Balance between tension and relaxation. I haven't come to the relaxation part yet. So right now, just the tension, just let your stretch, stretch your back and put your head on top of your spine so that it's not causing a strain on your back. And let yourself do that for a little bit and just get the feeling of your back. We don't usually, put our back in this kind of position very often.

[29:34]

Almost never. So this posture of your back is a kind of unconditioned posture because it's not dependent so much on what your activity is. Your activity is just to do that. And take a few deep breaths through your mouth like this. And when you take a breath, make it go all the way down to here. Not shallow breathing up here, but just let it drop and feel your lower abdomen expand when you take a breath. And then push it all out and feel your lower abdomen contracting.

[30:38]

until there's nothing left. Can you feel your abdomen squeezing in when you exhale so there's nothing left? And then take a breath again. Fill out your lower abdomen. And then exhale. And then inhale. And by doing that, you can establish your breathing very deeply in your lower abdomen. It feels like your lower abdomen. Of course, it's your lungs, but you feel it as your abdomen. And then just breathe through your nose naturally. Just let your breath come and go naturally through your nose.

[31:43]

But if your breathing is shallow, see if you can move it down to your lower abdomen. Maybe glance down at the table. Keep your eyes open, but glance down at the table in front of you. And try to maintain your posture. And follow your breath through your nose. And follow your breath as the rising and falling of your abdomen. In other words, instead of following your breath as it comes all through your nose and down into your abdomen.

[32:59]

Just follow it as the rising and falling of your lower abdomen. Now, I'd like you to count your breath in this way.

[34:02]

After you inhale, count one on the exhale so that the sound of one internally is right along with your breath. So say, one, right along with your breath. And then after you inhale, two. And see if you can count to 10. See if you can count 10 breaths. without something interfering. Just count from 1 to 10 on each exhale. One number on each exhale. When thoughts come into your mind, Just let them come and go. If you try to develop, find yourself developing your thought, just let it go and come back to what you're doing.

[35:10]

When you get to ten, start again with one. Anybody want to say anything about it?

[37:06]

No energy. Huh? No energy? How do you create energy? I give up tightrope walking. It's not floating. It's just a mistletoe. And I'll let you do that. Every ounce of energy you see in the system is gone by light. Is that energy or tenseness? Probably tenseness. Yeah. Sometimes we create, we equate energy with tenseness. It will be gone. Yeah. Just simply being, you can, following your breathing, you can become very relaxed. But do you experience it as without energy or without?

[38:08]

I feel the energy just all around. Do you keep your eyes open so you don't fall asleep? Yeah, keep your eyes open so you don't dream. Yeah, well that's natural. Anybody else have a description of what the tension is?

[39:09]

I have a bad back and I've been concentrating for the last year or so on getting that small of a back in. And any time I do that, it does, it helps. It helps tension. To release the tension? Yes. I mean, consider a pain there and down my leg, and this helps. Uh-huh. Yeah, it does. If you sit this, you know, with a really strong posture, well, we usually sit cross-legged, which makes it a little different. It makes it different. Because somehow the energy is circulating in a different way. But... your concentration gets very strong and the energy flows into your body, actually.

[40:40]

But it's not tense energy. It's a very pure kind of energy, less conditioned by your thinking mind and your desire mind. It's not conditioned by that. It's just pure energy flowing. So even sitting for a few minutes, you feel less attached to your agenda. How long do you normally sit for? 40 minutes. Is that a magic number? No, it's not. I mean, you can sit for an hour, half hour, 20 minutes. How long did we just... I don't know. I didn't time it. Maybe 10 minutes. Curtains open. Now put your curtains open.

[41:42]

Sometimes we sit all day. All day and all night. All day and all night? A couple of days. Sometimes seven days. And never go to sleep. Oh yeah. But you can sit. There are people who will sit for seven days without sleeping. Because your body is so much in harmony that you may feel sleepy, but you don't need to sleep. That's not common, but people do that. I remember at one point we used to have what was called sashim, where we'd sleep just a couple of hours a night. And in the monastery we'd get up at 3.30 to start, or start sitting at around 4 o'clock in the morning.

[42:48]

In the city we'd start at 5. Is the assumption the longer you sit, the more focused you get? Well, it isn't for a point, I understand. Yeah. What's the difference in this and regular meditating? You know, getting a break out of the chair, close your eyes, and kind of go through the same processes? Well, what we did was something close to that, which we didn't get into difficulties here, you know. When you sit for a long time, you get into a lot of difficulties. Your legs hurt, and maybe your back hurts, and maybe you want to do something else. And it becomes real. It becomes a real battleground to sustain yourself without some

[43:51]

outside help, without depending on something else. When you get in that position, when you do this, and get deep into it, then you really find out what you depend on in this life. So it's not just a matter of relaxing. That's nice, but it's a matter of coming to face yourself without any thing in between. That's the point. It's like, what do I really depend on? Who am I really? That's what it's about. And without escaping. No escape. It's like putting yourself into a place where you cannot wiggle out. And, you know, our life is... As long as we have a space where we can get out, we take it.

[45:00]

It's natural. It's like water, you know? Water comes out to a certain place. As long as there's a place to go, it goes. And we're just like that. But... And only in certain situations, you know, accidental situations, do we find ourselves in that position? Lost on the top of a mountain, you know, or something like that. In a war or something, you know. That's why people actually, I think one reason why people like war, they love it, because you don't ordinarily get into that situation. And if you listen to people talking about their experiences, you hear a lot of people that say they were in the war, maybe not the Vietnam War, but in wars, and they talk about their experiences, the highest experience of their life, because it's a life and death situation, and a really vital situation to them.

[46:14]

Most people talk about high risk. Yeah, high risk. A lot of high risk. You get high risk in business, you get high risk. Right, that's true. Yes. It's a crisis in your life. Crisis in your life. Obviously that's the most current thing in the memory is. Yeah, it's the thing that really matters. Right. And the same thing happens when you get deeper into Zazen. is you get yourself into a position where there's no escape, and you don't know how to handle it. You don't know what to do. And you've got to find out, without escaping from a situation, without moving, how you're going to deal with that situation. So people freak out? Well, sometimes. But not so often. It's amazing, actually, that they don't. But it's possible. It really is. Yeah. They said, how did I get into this position?

[47:16]

I'll never do this again as long as I live, you know. But then they could come back because it's very vital. We inverted that position, you know, here. What was your experience of all this, being a meditator? It was a comforting and focusing experience. See, that's it. There are two sides. When you get deeply into it, there are two sides. One is the focusing and comforting part, and the other side is the excruciating, pain and inability to escape. And they go together.

[48:18]

And that's what our life is like. It's just, you know. What kind of meditation do you practice? I would say the lazy man's formula of what we just went through. He doesn't sit up straight. I don't sit up. In fact, I lie down. But it's the same basic thing, only I've been concentrating on the breath. How long did you do it? I tried to do it for 20 minutes, even. I don't know how long it took me. Oh yeah, it really... What happens to my energy level is that the day goes on, it's 5 in the morning, and I gradually work my way down, and what this does is bring me back up again.

[49:23]

The ideal thing for me, which I have not been able to do, would be to do it about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, instead of 6 in the morning. Why is the pain necessary? Well, it's not necessary. Let's put it this way. In your life, how do you feel about the pain in your life? Do you feel that there's some pain in your life? Why is that necessary? For what? Exactly. That's exactly right. Same thing. This is part of life. You know, you don't extract yourself out of life to meditate. You actually put yourself into it. It may or may not be.

[50:26]

Right. If it's not there, no problem. Some other problem. But there is usually pain accompanying in your legs when you're sitting. When you've been sitting for a long time, you can sit without pain, except when you sit for a long time. Everybody experiences that. Don't your legs go to sleep, too? Yeah, they go to sleep, too. That drives me crazy. A lot of discomfort. But the point is, how do you get comfortable? With discomfort. With discomfort, right. We're always changing our equipment. Life is like this. We're always falling out of balance. Every moment, we're falling out of balance and regaining our balance.

[51:30]

We stand up, we sit down, and we walk, and we talk, and we do these things. And we're readjusting our balance all the time. So sitting in Zazen is not different than that. You just sit there and maintain your balance by doing one thing. It's not changing your equipment. But our life is like trying to make ourselves comfortable all the time, in one way or another. We, you know, have the, here in America, we have the possibility of choosing our comforts and discomforts. Most places you don't have that. A lot of places you don't have that choice. We have lots of ways of choosing how to do it. And so, we have a great toy industry. You know, we like to play, and I'm not criticizing that, but we do have that. And we have lots of ways of making ourselves comfortable without having to find face our discomfort, what it is that's really making us uncomfortable.

[52:37]

And if we're just faced with what it is that's making us uncomfortable, without any alternatives, we have a hard time. So, Zazen goes beyond just being comfortable, in the usual sense. You have to deal with what's making you... How do you become comfortable in this completely painful situation? How do you find your calmness of mind? Because, you know, heaven and hell are in our mind. We create our situation. Yeah, we can create a kind of heavenly situation through circumstances, but one blow, you know, and it's all gone. So, what I'm really talking about is, you know, what's the real basic comfortable situation?

[53:48]

How do you get comfortable in an uncomfortable situation? How do you find your ease within your difficulty? Yeah, you can do it anywhere. But people like to come together and practice together because it's encouraging and there's a feeling of doing something together. And you learn by practicing with other people. And you keep it straight, you don't get off on a sidetrack. So do you ask yourself questions or something when you're in the meditation? Well, it's possible. In the way we practice, we just concentrate on the posture and the breathing, just to have that bare attention. There are questions sometimes that, like a koan, you know, have you ever heard of koans and zen?

[54:52]

Kind of question like, what's the sound of one hand clapping? You know, it's kind of a question which is not logically definable, but which helps to focus your attention in a way that you go beyond logic. But we don't use that in our meditation. Well, there's a tendency toward vegetarianism in Buddhism. But we don't. We eat everything. No. Tassajara food is vegetarian. It's true. But we don't make a judgment on people eating non-vegetarian food.

[56:01]

And we participate with people eating what they eat. We are focusing more on the mind than the body anyway. Than what? No, more on the money than the body. No, no, that's not true. Part of the body is what you put into it. I see, you mean I'm, yeah. I heard something about every two years, 80% remake yourself. Right. So we have a tendency towards vegetarianism. In other words, mostly we don't. But sometimes, you know, we eat a little meat. It's a big judgment on the world to have an exclusive kind of diet. It's nice to not do it, but rather than be so exclusive from the world, we feel that it's better to participate doing what people do,

[57:12]

to some extent, you know. Go get a hamburger, you know, like ordinary people. Bill's question was interesting. His suggestion was that Zen practice focuses more on the mind than the body. Well, if you look at Zazen, it's just the body. And the point is that we tend to divide the body and the mind. Divide. Separate. So we talk about the mind, we talk about the body, and that's necessary to do that. But it's also necessary to see that they're one thing. So we don't pay any more attention to one than the other. And in Zazen... That's where you come into conflict with some different religious practices. Right, oh yeah, definitely. Definitely. See, asceticism is to deny the body in order to bring out the spirit, you know, or the mind.

[58:20]

But we don't do that. We don't deny the body or Yeah, yeah, it's true that that's big, that's true. So we, you know, we spent years at Tassajara, you know, developing a vegetarian diet. And that's what comes, that's what comes out of Greens. Greens is the result of the Zen students at Tassajara trying to figure out what is it, what are they going to eat? You know, you get a whole bunch of people in a place where 15 miles into the forest with very little contact with the outside world. And they all come from different backgrounds and dietary needs and ways of eating.

[59:28]

So I remember in the early 70s, We had the macrobiotics, the mucous-less diet people, you name it, you know, and we had it. Well, as we were developing the practice as how do you satisfy all these people's needs and at the same time come to one diet that everybody has to eat? And that was part of what we were doing. You know, we just had to do it. I remember one time we were snowed in. It snows up there on the ridge and we couldn't get out and this is in the early days and we didn't have any, we were starting to run out of food and we were eating wheat berries and we got a little tired of that after a while. So people were

[60:29]

We'd go out into the forest and pick wild vegetables. Lamb's ears and miner's lettuce and all kinds of stuff out there that's really nutritious and makes great salads. And to this day, they put those ingredients into the guest food. And it really makes a wonderful salad. People don't usually experience that because most of our food is cultured. And wild food has a whole different flavor to it. I want to say something about that, particularly with reference to you. He almost died from colitis. I almost died from cancer. And I would be dead now, pretty sure, if I hadn't been practicing Zazen, because I was My mind was not connected to my body. I could not actually feel something.

[61:32]

Joko sensei said to me one day, that is a feeling. And I had never really experienced that before I had my operation. That. Not some stuff you imagine in your mind, but a physical sensation. And since I've been sitting, I feel tension. I can feel my body and I can now deal with the tension that comes up in my real life, because the tension is all in your body. It's not in neural synapses. That's where it is. And now that I'm connected to my body, I have, I have, I have real emotional strength. But wouldn't you also agree that what, what happens in your body, at just that point, is created from your mind, and how your mind relates to the world around you? Yes, right. But before that, I was dealing with the mind. Only in the middle. In the middle point of view.

[62:33]

Sure, but to get the body where it doesn't have attentions, you gotta get back to the mind and tell it not to program the body with all the stress. Both. The stress comes up all the time. The body can't tell the mind. Just can't. It can relate to the mind what's going on. Well, you're assuming there's two different things in there. What I've experienced is there isn't any. Anyways, the other point I want to make on the food thing is like, you know, there's a lot of the, you know, food-oriented places like Weimar Institute and that, where people who have, you know, real significant health problems go, and it's, you know, it's run by, I think, by the Seventh Day Adventists. And to me, the real revelation in their life is that, you know, the impact that their diet has on their entire life, you know, the stresses and Yeah, when you get some guy who's got a heart attack or some kind of life-threatening situation, and you can show him how he can, I guess, ease the error of the way through the dietary thing, it seems like a real dramatic impact on people.

[63:45]

Yeah, I think that's true. We don't put so much emphasis on that, actually. Any other questions or observations? How big is your congregation or whatever you call it? About 50 people. How many in the Bay Area? Oh, in the Bay Area, there's hundreds of people. I don't know how many. It's hard to count. When you go to Green Gulch, there are 200 people for a lecture every Sunday. I don't know who they are. We don't know if they ever come back. But a lot of them actually do. But as far as Zen students go, I don't know, there have been a lot of people that have gone through periods of time to a Zen center, you know, in one place or another.

[64:46]

And some people, you know, stay, and others stay for a while, and, you know, some leave. Is there any connection to, like, the India, you know, centralism? ties to the other death practices throughout the world? Well, yes. I mean, our practice comes from Japan. Is that like your head practice? Head recorders. Yeah, but we're not so tied into Japan. Actually, most of the teachers, especially the Japanese teachers in the United States, wanted us to develop our own way rather than be tied to Japanese way. And I think that's been good, but we still do have ties with Japanese practice. And I think in the future we'll have more contact with Japanese. But our teachers didn't want us to be tied in with the Japanese bureaucracy.

[65:54]

Because they felt that our practice was rather innocent. And wanted us to develop in that innocent atmosphere. You know, so we wouldn't get all mixed up with Japanese Buddhist politics. That's the next step, you know. Yeah, I know. But it's inevitable, you know. It's bad enough to deal with American Buddhist politics. Yeah. That's the evolution of any society. It is. Then you get to a point where Just can't stand it anymore, and you cut it all down and let it grow again. Then you have some revolution, have a nice big war. Right. Start over again. Right. Have a little bit more. We all love war, you know. Lots of energy, right Steve? That's why you're totally happy. You said at the beginning, you want to be an artist or a soldier. That's right. An artist, not your soldier.

[67:00]

That's right. Those things are still there. Fight the good fight, you know? But try not to harm people in the process. That's the problem. Well, that's right. You can't. Well, the thing is, you know, you do your battles with yourself. Ideally. And I think that's Any other CEO-type issues arise in your heads? I know a way you can do it. I know a way you can do it. Come on over here. Come on over here.

[67:58]

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