As you are well aware, I'm very grateful to be doing this practice with you. And in this place. In fact, for me it's a kind of miracle that we're doing this. And I've been trying to give you some feeling for the manner, in English it means by hand, the manner in which you do something, the manner in which we take the precepts. And the understanding with which we take the precepts. Perhaps it's a little like driving a car. There's various rules that you have to know in order to pass your driving license.

[01:06]

Look, one of the rules I had to learn when I came to Europe was that cars coming from the right have the right of way. We don't have such a rule in America. You either have a main street or a side street, and there's no in-between. Whoa. And we can also turn right on red in America, except in Manhattan. So I had to... It's quite hard to learn. People can just drive in from the right, so I have to... You know, learn this when I'm in Europe.

[02:13]

But even though we know these rules, or have to learn these rules, they don't mean anything unless you know how to drive. So... So these precepts are pretty commonplace, but they make some difference if you know how to practice with them. Now, as I said yesterday, like if I pick up this stick, this stick is just part of my practice. This was one of Suzuki Roshi's teaching staffs and so it was part of his practice and now it's part of my practice.

[03:15]

So just as this stick is part of my practice, so this building is part of my practice and our practice. And there's some rules about the kind of place that one practices in. And it's... especially important, significant, whether you can do an ordination ceremony in a place or not. In Japan, for many centuries, the government controlled which temples were ordination platforms. Only a few places in the whole country could you give the precepts.

[04:34]

And then there's another rule that once a place is a practice place, you should ensure it as being a practice place in perpetuity, forever. So, you know, even practically this is wonderful to think that ideally we can be here for many generations. We know if we make a garden, maybe one or two hundred years or longer from now, someone will be using the garden and it will be nearly the same garden. We can protect it from becoming some kind of hotel or something like that.

[05:43]

In fact, in Kyoto, for example, where the city is just going everywhere, up the hills and everything, comes to the gate of a temple and it stops. For a thousand years, the gate and then the garden has stopped the city. It may seem rather presumptuous, but if they can be successful for a thousand years, why can't we? I mean, we might as well try. And believe it or not, one of the first steps is us guys taking our little precepts. They say when someone takes the precepts, flowers fall.

[06:45]

And the earth trembles. Anyway, that's how we talk about this. But it does mean that once you take the precepts into place, it should be a temple, especially be a temple, a practice place forever. So when Gisela called me up and said, Roshi, bring your seals and things because we want to do a precept ceremony at Johanneshof. I thought, oh my goodness, does she know what she's asking? So, for a thousand years. For a thousand years. So I thought, yes, Gisela always knows what she's doing, so I get my seals and everything.

[08:15]

Now, the way you purify or wash, clean something in Buddhism... is you wash it, like if you have an old okesa or old raksu. For example, if you inherited someone's raksu. The way you can use it in the ceremony is you wash it or clean it as best we can. Then we scatter flowers on it. And then we take incense and burn incense around it. Then we put it on the altar and we bow to it. This is, it becomes new. Yes. So in a sense, the precept ceremony is making this building new.

[09:43]

And part of the ceremony traditionally would be that all of you who are taking the precepts would do a jundo. Jundo means like in the morning when I walk around the zendo saying good morning and you put your hands up when I go by. This is called a Jundo. So we customarily for taking the precepts would do a Jundo through the building to all the main places like the kitchen and the workroom and so forth and outside too. And we'd scatter some flowers, some petals, and we would offer incense at each altar. Yeah, and before that, you would have taken a good bath and put on clean underwear and everything. This is the procedure.

[10:47]

And you can find it even in Dogen. He says, oh, this is how it should be done. So maybe we should do this. And while you're walking around, if you want to, you chant sort of under your breath a little bit, Om Shakyamuni Buddha, Om Shakyamuni Buddha. Yeah, that's good. Good translation. You guys didn't know what you were getting yourself in for. Okay. Excuse me for blowing my nose all the time, but I have a slight allergy to dust and things like that.

[11:57]

Incense smog. And then usually we sit before the ceremony. So perhaps the best way, if we do this, is to take a bath and so forth at some point today. Have time to do that. And then come in here to sit for... I don't know. We'll make a schedule, but one or two periods or so before the ceremony. And then we maybe start the densho, the bell, for perhaps 18 hits. And during that time, or a little before, we have to figure out the time.

[13:20]

Everybody who's sitting would go and walk around to the various places and then come in here and then we start the ceremony. Does this sound okay to you, Ino-sama? I have to discuss it with Gerasim Gisler, and if there's some change, we'll tell you. Yeah. So when we chose this building, Johanneshof, one reason we chose it is because it had been a practice place. And someone should continue. And while I thought the Rütte community would continue it, I said, no, we probably shouldn't. But when it became clear that they would not continue it, I thought we should do so. Then I had to make sure that it felt honest enough as a building and had the facilities for being a good place to do sashins.

[14:48]

I like this very honest floor. Each board is quite beautiful. Yeah. And I had to decide, we had to decide if this was a good place where we could do, where we could take the precinct. So I thought so, and we thought so, so we went ahead. What I don't know is if, I've discussed this with some of you, is if we can do practice periods here or not. Because there's certain rules, like Tassajara was approved, actually got a paper saying, Tassajara is approved to be a place where the three-month 90-day practice period can occur.

[16:11]

We're not asking Japan for approval, but still the rules that we follow are important. How many years was it before I felt at Creston that we had sufficient facilities to do a practice period? So it's not automatic. In my opinion, you can just do a practice period anywhere. So there should be certain facilities and a certain mandala-like quality to the space. And it should also be a place big enough that you can be there for three months without leaving. I don't know if this is big, although Jacqueline said this is like a whole village inside a building.

[17:38]

And you can certainly get lost in here easier than in most villages. Still, maybe it's not big enough So maybe we have to buy our neighbor's farm. Don't tell them. Or maybe this field that used to belong to the property behind us. But I would like to do practice periods in Europe, and so we have to think about how to do it. Now, I think we've understood that the mind in which you make the decision to take the precepts This moment-by-moment mind is not the same mind that you usually follow the precepts.

[18:54]

I mean, your decision, for instance, to be a lawyer or a doctor or a carpenter or something like that, this decision comes at some point in your life. But how you maintain this career is not the same mind in which you made the decision to follow this career. But actually in the precepts the best way to follow the precepts is to follow them with the mind that made the decision to take the precepts. And this is practice. To find out how to hold the precepts in view. Even with the, you know, the The right of way of drivers coming in from the right.

[20:14]

The right of way of drivers coming in from the right. I have to hold that in mind. I can't remember it at the time when some car comes out. I have to hold it in my mind and body so that my arms know, even my arms know that someone may come out from over there. So I can be ready. So I think we have to hold the precepts in mind so we're ready to follow them. Sukhya used to like examples like cooking. He said, you know, you may make soup by tasting it and adding salt and tasting it and adding a little salt, but you're likely to end up with a pretty salty soup.

[21:26]

It may be better to follow the recipe, he said. Maybe until you're quite a good cook. Or he loved to work with stones. He loved working in the garden. Und er liebte es, mit Steinen zu arbeiten. Er liebte es, im Garten zu arbeiten. And he had a funny finger, like this, because he got it crushed under a stone once. And he had one hand like this. Weil er ihn einmal unter einem Stein zerschmettert hatte. So sometimes when I do gassho, I do this because I want to be like my teacher. But there's nothing wrong with this one, I think. Yeah. And when I took the precepts, of course, you know, it was all in Japanese.

[22:36]

There was no translation. And it just went on forever. And it just went on forever. Maybe that's why I like being in Germany so much. It reminds me of being in Japan. I kind of like not knowing what's going on. It feels such a relief. So I had to take both my ordination as a priest and my lay ordination, all in Japanese, so it meant I really had to trust my teacher. And trust the practice. At one point I said, what does all this mean? Suzuki-oshi said, don't worry, it will be all right. So I said, okay. Okay. Okay.

[23:48]

My life has been this okay ever since. So he liked working in the garden and working with rocks. And he would sometimes, he could move very big rocks. He was quite good at it. We just had to do our first ashes ceremony at Creston. So we all walked around looking for a site to put Robert Winston's ashes. And it was quite interesting because everybody was saying, let's choose this place, it has a good view. And you realized people knew they weren't just choosing a site for Robert, they were choosing a site for themselves. Und es war klar, den Leuten war bewusst, sie suchen nicht nur einen Platz für Robert, sondern auch für sich selbst.

[25:07]

Because I think quite a few of us are going to end up there. Denn ich denke, ziemlich viele von uns werden dort enden. So, then we walked around and we found a good place. It can't be too far away, or nobody can get to it. It's way up on the side of the mountain. Und wir gingen herum und haben einen guten Platz gefunden, der ganz nahe an der Bergseite ist. So we found a good place in a grove of four or five trees. So it's, you know, walking up the road toward the water, there's a little old road that used to go. When we go up that old road and sort of where it curves back into the new road, just in there there's a little grove of trees. We can make a whole... Hundreds of people can be there.

[26:09]

So this is the first person who's there permanently. Robert died at 36 of colitis unexpectedly. So his mother and sisters and many friends came out from the East Coast and from Santa Fe. And we hunted and we found a good stone, a nice stone shaped like a gashow, a stone shaped like this. And then we had to move it. It's pretty big. So I called up Dan Welch. And Dan was coming up for the ceremony. And he had moved the stone we had for Sukhirashi. And we brought that stone from farther than Harishreed to here.

[27:32]

And it's a big stone, you know, like this kind of. So they made a tripod of pipe with a winch in the middle. Und Sie haben ein Dreieck of pipe aus Rohren gemacht. Winch is like chain and it has a hook and you crank it up. Mit einer Winde, Seilwinde. Seilwinde. Seilwinde. I'm going to have the most unusual vocabulary. Ich werde das ungewöhnlichste Vokabular haben. I'm going to be able to pronounce some of the strangest German words. Ich werde die seltsamsten deutschen Wörter aussprechen können. So I said to Dan, geez, you know, no one up here knows how to move a big stone. Do you suppose that you can get us some pipe and we have to make a wing? He said, I've already got one made. So he came up and you put these three poles up and then you pick up the stone and then you swing it and you drop it and then you move the... and then you pick it up and you swing it and you drop it.

[28:42]

Man stellt dieses Dreigestell auf und zieht den Stein hinauf, schwingt ihn und lässt ihn fallen. Dann bewegt man das Ganze, schwingt den Stein und lässt ihn fallen. You can imagine getting from farther away than Hereschried to here, it took a couple of weeks or so. Man könnte sich vorstellen, von weiter als Hereschried bis hierher, das brauchte einige Wochen. So this stone was up the stream halfway to the water tank. Der Stein war auf halbem Wege zum Wassertank. And of course there's some rules about how you make, how you put the ashes in. And in the ceremony everybody whose family or friends or Dharma brothers or sisters takes some of the ashes and puts them under the stone themselves. So this was a big step for Christan too. So anyway, Sukersi liked to work with stones.

[30:08]

We have the ceremony tomorrow. And he would look at a stone very carefully. And then he'd go over and he'd put a chisel and usually in one or two hits it broke in half. And with somebody helping him, he would watch and they would be hitting it maybe for a day or two, trying to find... Somebody watched him? He would watch someone trying to... And he would say, should I help or should I not? Because basically they're both students, but a teacher is also the student in this kind of situation.

[31:09]

And when he looked at someone who had been hovering around for days, he looked at them and thought to himself, should I help or not? Because the teacher is also a student in this situation. So it was, you know, even in cutting, his point was even in cutting a stone, there's some rules. And he meant the precepts are a way to know exactly how to have access into our life. And another example he liked was of bamboo. You know, of course in Japan they have quite big bamboo. And you know, bamboo grows its full size in just a short time. A few weeks. Sixty feet tall. But it's got its full shape, but it's not very strong.

[32:10]

It's kind of fuzzy sometimes on the outside. And when you hit it, it goes bock, bock. But after a few years, it gets quite thick inside. And then when you hit it, it goes boop, boop. I could have done the original better, I'm sorry. I will have to try harder. His point was that our human nature looks pretty formed, right, as we grow up.

[33:13]

But until it grows from inside, it's not very strong like bamboo. So zazen and mindfulness and the precepts help us grow from inside, so our human nature becomes quite strong. And bamboo is used in Buddhism a lot, like Nagarjuna says, how do you make a snake straight? Do you know how to make a snake straight? You put it in a bamboo. Once you know the answer it's easy. But it's not so easy to get a snake to go in bamboo.

[34:20]

And it's not so easy to get your mind to go in your backbone. So once you make your human nature straight, then you put your mind in your human nature, in your backbone. In various ways, I try to hold the precepts in view. For example, I decided that I would say nothing critical for one year. Have I criticized you recently? No. This was many years ago I gave up. I had to think about this remark. Was that a critical remark?

[35:46]

No. Goodness sakes. So, yes, this was 1962 or 63 or so. And it wasn't so much that my criticism was bad, my criticism was very good. I don't know about that, actually. I wanted to get free of the critical state of mind. I like this, I don't like that, there's anything... Ich mag das und ich mag das nicht. My mind was driving me crazy. Mein mind machte mich einfach verrückt. So I decided to say nothing critical for a year. So people would say to me, did you like that movie you just saw? I'd say, yes.

[36:55]

It's rather difficult, you know, to not say anything critical about food or restaurant or people or movies. But, you know, it got... It freed me a lot to not do it for a year. And another example I told you before, I didn't like a kind of mind of hesitation. So I decided to never hesitate. So I'd go in a restaurant and I'd put my finger down, eat whatever my finger hit. And I learned to point to the left side because it's cheaper on the left side. So I, because I used to say, oh, I'll have this, and this would taste good, and this, and oh, I hate it.

[38:08]

And I would dial telephone numbers and not look them up. And if it was in the middle of a telephone number, I'd realize, I don't think this is right. My telephone bill went up with wrong numbers called long distance numbers. But I learned something. Anyway, we take these precepts to join the human race. To look at what the most basic things we'd like human beings to do. How would we like human beings to be? How can we live together? So, we should do it too. I used to think there should be some exception for me. I don't know, I had some arrogant idea.

[39:21]

So to take the precepts was just to decide to join the human race. The way we should, I felt we should all, we should try to live. So, thank you very much. Thank you.

[40:12]

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