I want to talk to you a little bit about what the foundation is, and I'm not, as you can imagine, pretty busy at the moment, but I'm still trying to continue. So I don't have, I haven't had time to find out how to talk to you. I'll talk about something so subtle as what the founder is, but Alan Watts was the founder of Buddhism in the West, and the founder of dimensionality.

[01:20]

Living, which all of you right now are actually living, and you have been, since the beginning Even if you weren't practicing Buddhism for five years, you can only practice it for a period of time. Maybe for some of you it will dispel a certain innocence we have about practice and the

[02:41]

As you know, Buddhism itself is a pretty powerful medicine, and you should know how to take it. It's not so, there are no specific instructions, and it's not so easy to find out all by yourself. And as you know, we practice that in that confronting your own karma is rather sometimes a disturbing experience. Sometimes we don't want to, let me put it this way, sometimes we say, we don't want a practice which adds anything to any kind of program practice.

[03:59]

But often that feeling comes from the fear of disturbing your own programs. Some people say, have a feeling, oh I have this spiritual insight, I want some practice. We will open that up for you. Both of these aren't so good. What you want is the willingness to confront your practice, and the willingness to confront your karma. And the practice which is uncoordinated. Willingness to look at the wrong path. Confronting your own karma is such a powerful experience.

[05:02]

Sometimes, how much more so confronting the karma of society. It's a dangerous and harrowing experience. This is what we do. Encounter. As I talked about yesterday, I'm happy you're almost here today, and you're involved in some of the things I've said yesterday. Why the encounter between a miller-ethel and a bum priest is described in such heroic terms. For a founder is a heroic. Takes on a heroic. So,

[06:21]

I don't know what word to use. Karmic or danger. But as I said yesterday, miller-ethel, the section on miller-ethel and the bum priest, one of the most dramatic and fanciful or magical sections in a hundred thousand songs. And miller-ethel wins every time. And the bum priest, in a series of challenges, is finally defeated. And it's not so different, as I said yesterday, from the confrontation going on in television between the gun fool and the Christian, and the Christ-making cowboy, and the gun fool, and the budgie, and the cows, and the deer.

[07:25]

And they win every encounter with the cowboys. And how unusual it is that the hero of each television program which has so much cooperation and is educated is half-Chinese, is not Christian, and not white Anglo-Saxon Parson. The fact that he has such a change from just a few years ago, ten years ago, or twenty years ago, when in similar popular programs the, you know, like in Buckledger, the people of the Century of the Universe,

[08:31]

a Chinese member, he looked like a Chinese member and had a Chinese name. And that kind of change is, you can say, has a great deal to do with Alan Watts. So I said to Mickey, it's a great deal. But Alan Watts did something special. He understood the relationship between Western culture and Oriental culture better than anybody. Right. And so he was able to touch people and turn them around. Many, many people. It was amazing how many people he was able to put into a different kind of space very quickly, through a few movies. Saying something so obvious, why didn't we think of it ourselves? But also the encounter of such persons with society,

[09:40]

of the dimension of the world. Such a popular encounter, and how it could be more memorable and more obvious. And the same is true of Dogen, who found such a school in Japan, or Kobodachi, who founded Shinran's school. Nagarjuna. Such people, if you read the stories about their lives, took on an enormous psychic confrontation. And the secret of survival in such a confrontation is raising it to the level of cooperation. But if you don't know what you're doing,

[10:43]

you'll be crazy. Some shape will be formed. So, maybe only a founder has to, by downfall, has to know this problem so well. The condition, first of all, of course, for a founder to appear. Such a person appears only once in a century or a generation who can do this kind of work. First, the condition must be right. And the right condition is that many people must have done their work. Completed their work. And the founder must know what that work is,

[11:52]

how it was done, and when it was used. So, So, profound relationship for the founder, like that one, between the unfolding of one's own practice and the unfolding of society's own awareness. And I'm talking about this because it's also true for each of you. You may not be founders,

[12:55]

but we are practicing, in fact, when our own society is in transition. And we are finding out how to practice by finding that our own life came to a standstill and we had to start from the beginning again. And now we're finding out that our own society is coming to a standstill and we have to start figuring out from the beginning again. And that's what we're trying to do, in a simple way, just to make the farm and the monastery, the temple and the city, work for us as a place to practice. So, So I said there are

[13:57]

three practices in Buddhism and one more special practice, especially important for the founder and for the priest. The three practices are survival, how to live, particularly how to find a way to live. And if you understand that thoroughly, find out how to live, you know, you'll find out. It's almost exactly the same as the precepts. Do not kill. Do not live that is not given. Understand your production of karma through body, speech and mind. And the second is an attempt to get at

[14:58]

what's really going on and what ultimate reality is or isn't or what we can or can't know. So, this is jhana, samadhi, prajna. Your own zazen practice, shudra practice. Third is compassion or service, putting yourself in the place of others for our vow to save all sentient beings. But now, you know, I want to say

[15:58]

to talk about new wisdom. Some of you know what hubris is, anyway. Some of you don't. But I'll explain. Hubris is a Greek word which means which is usually translated as pride, joy, pitfall, fall. Over-weaning pride or ambition. That's what it is. So, that translation doesn't give any full weight over hubris. But hubris is probably the most powerful moral imperative in Western culture, in Western society. And what hubris proposes is that there is a fundamental intimate relationship between your mind and your situation.

[17:01]

Or your mind and events. Or the progress or movement of events. And so it is derived that some identity, some special identity, some special feel importance from your life situation, from the movements of events. You take them to your own credit. The events themselves are destroyed. This is some law of Western morality or Western culture. And if you look at Greek tragedy or Western theater, some serious drama, usually there's some almost always

[18:04]

hubris at the base as explaining why there is success or failure. But what could be let me say something more about hubris. Hubris is rather a subtle word that is derived from the same root as hybris which means the making of a wild boar and a sow became a sow. So it's a mixture of levels, getting the levels mixed up. How to get your levels straight is an important part of practice. What level of confrontation do you have with yourself and society, of course? But what could be more what could be a greater hubris overload than enlightenment?

[19:05]

This is some hubris overload as which I'm going to say with all intensity. Zen center is going to be a big, good example for our society. I'm painting a big target on the floor. Or, just sit here and talk. Or our society is coming unglued. We can see that our technological machinery is running down at least out of fuel. And that our system of government is exploited by a few. And that no one of us really wants to trust our system

[20:11]

of society and government. And when that trust is gone, the newspapers say credibility, it's almost definitely over. Actually, it may take one century or so. For his own Socrates, again, I'm not making a parallel between Socrates and the Bodhisattva or many of our own situations and this kind of confrontation. But, Socrates did confront his society. And they asked him to die because of it. And because he was free, quite free it seems,

[21:11]

of the person to not die or die or to follow the course of events, he followed the course of events and drank a cup of tea. And he perceived that the events themselves, mind and matter, a real gadget. that if you were out of sequence with out of touch with the events because you've taken them on as your own property, you can no longer move with the events. And at the highest level, this means what? Avalokiteshvara

[22:14]

who looks down from on high, moving in a deep course or coursing. So as I talked about before, culturally moving is the chakra, civilization is habitation or security or possession or a citadel. So you form a city to protect yourself to build a city wall and make something secure to protect your possession to make a peaceful place where you can walk at night. But as you know now, our cities are the most dangerous place to live of all. So our cities are no longer cities. That again is a common place of newspapers, but it strikes at the whole point of civilization

[23:14]

or civification is to make some safe place and when it is being attacked from within, some serious change is occurring. So a man like Alan Watts is someone who sees this happening, who saw this happening many years ago, who knew what was going to happen with Buddhism in this country many years ago. And he was willing to take on himself this kind of competition and treat it as it

[24:14]

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happen years ago. he he knew many years ago. And knew what was happen with many years ago. And he knew what was You are with us, we are with you, showing happy nature, the nature of awakening. We are very grateful.

[56:32]

May God bless you. May God bless you. May God bless you.

[57:59]

May God bless you. May God bless you. May God bless you.

[59:32]

May God bless you. [...]

[61:00]

May God bless you. May God bless you. May God bless you.

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May God bless you. May God bless you. May God bless you.

[64:01]

May God bless you. [...]

[66:15]

May God bless you. [...]

[67:42]

May God bless you. May God bless you. May God bless you. Om. For Alan Watts, he blazed out the new path for all of us and came back and made it clear,

[69:05]

explored the side canyons and deer trails and investigated cliffs and thickets. Many guides would have us travel single file like mules in a pack train and never leave the trail. Alan taught us to move forward like the breeze, tasting the berries, greeting the blue jays, learning and loving the whole terrain.

[69:33]

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