I am not the taste of truth, but the darkness of words. Last week I gave a talk at Zen Center about some of the differences between Zen practice in Japan and in America. How our practice is quite different than practice in Japan. Even though I haven't been to Japan, I can say so. having studied with various Japanese teachers and knowing a little something about indifference.

[01:07]

Our practice, as a matter of fact, is unrecognizable to Japanese people as Zen practice. To a Japanese monk coming from Japan, our practice is unrecognizable as Zen practice, except to some discerning people who can see it. It doesn't look at all the same. We sit Zazen and have service, And that's something similar, but our way of life is quite different, and our way of doing things is quite different. And so when we, as our practice develops, we have to take into consideration these various things. And I remember how Suzuki Roshi, Suzuki Roshi was a very unusual teacher for, not so unusual a teacher for a Japanese person, but unusual person in being able to see Americans as Americans, Japanese as Japanese.

[02:43]

and knowing the difference and knowing how they're the same. So he had a very unusual quality and he didn't try to turn us into Japanese. And at the same time, he wanted us to have a very pure kind of practice. and to understand and respect the Japanese Buddhist way. So he was very open to a lot of things and also very closed to a lot of things. But he gave us a lot of space to develop our way. as Americans. I remember when Tassajara opened in 1967, it was the same year as Berkley Zendo opened, and at that time there were a lot of different people

[04:02]

from a lot of different backgrounds who didn't quite understand so much about practice because there had never been a monastic situation in America, a Buddhist monastic situation in America. And one example of working things out was the food, how to feed everyone and how to take care of food. and how to make it work. And it took years to develop a kind of diet. At first, I remember when we were sitting at Soko-ji in San Francisco, the temple, original Zen Center temple, which was a Japanese temple, and the Americans were guests of the Japanese congregation. And they were Suzuki Roshi students. who came to see him because they wanted to practice, learn something about practice, and so that's where the practice developed first.

[05:08]

And every Saturday we'd have breakfast sitting in the zendo, and we'd have these trays of honey and all kinds of condiments, honey and milk, to put on the cereal, just like Americans eat breakfast. He was very accommodating to us. And it was very luscious, actually, very rich. But when Tassajara opened, we assumed a more austere attitude. Everybody understood it was going to be a monastery. And we started eating gamasyo as a condiment for more Japanese style. and pickles. We used to have rice and pickles for breakfast and gruel for breakfast. And at that time, also, macrobiotic eating was a big fad.

[06:15]

And there were a lot of people who were into Zen practice because of the connection they felt that it had with macrobiotic eating. A lot of people, you know, judge their whole life by what they eat. And they have eating practice, which is the biggest thing in their life. How they eat becomes the biggest part of their life. And so a lot of the people who had that attitude, especially were microbiotics, microbiotic people. And then there was another kind of fad where people didn't eat fruit with cereal. Acid. I can't remember the name of that one.

[07:20]

But there were a lot of food fads at that time. And they were all kind of vying for dominance. in the Sangha. And Suzuki Roshi's attitude toward food was completely different than our attitude toward food. Our attitude toward food is that we eat the food which is healthy for us. And we select food on those terms. And so we have all these ideas about food. And his idea about food was we think more about the food that we have and we eat the food that we have and pay great respect to whatever food we have. That was his idea, which is a more Buddhist idea. But he understood our idea and he thought that we should not give that idea up. So there was a kind of balance, to try to maintain a balance between respecting the food that we have

[08:23]

and choosing food on the basis of how it affects our health. You know, in the Japanese monastery they just eat rice and pickles and food that people offer to them. Sometimes they have special meals that lay people cook for the whole sangha. That's traditional. So rice and pickles and some vegetables. slushy soup, wet rice. And that way, you know, you develop a respect for all kinds of food. And so your attention goes out to the food rather than to yourself. But he understood our idea and And in Japan, they eat white rice.

[09:26]

And he respected our idea about eating brown rice. And so he thought that was a very good idea. But if you're used to eating white rice all your life, and you're 60 years old, you don't want to eat brown rice, really. But he ate brown rice, you know. And if you come from an oriental culture to an American culture, anything you eat is quite strange. Very strange. But he ate, you know, stuff. He ate bread and whatever we wanted to eat. I think it ended his life ten years early. But So over a long period of time, the food within that practice, it was a very central issue, and it became refined and developed.

[10:27]

And then at Tassajara there was also a guest season, you know, there's always a guest season when Zen Center took over that Tassajara resort. There were a lot of people who'd been going there for years and years. and didn't want to stop going there. And so since then I made a compromise with those people and developed what they called the guest season, allowing the guest season to continue and actually making it much more of a thing than it was before. And so the students developed, they had to cook for the guests, vegetarian food. So they had to develop a way of cooking which was acceptable and desired by the guests.

[11:28]

So they developed this whole epicurean kind of vegetarian diet which resulted in the Tassajara Bread Bakery and Greens Restaurant. So that was one kind of development of our practice, which started from pickles and rice to expanding something of our practice, a development into society at large. And that continues to be developed. I think that the Tassajara food for the students has become too luscious. Because the students, you know, we're eating rice and gruel and feeding all this luscious food to the guests.

[12:29]

So, and when you're in a place where you have a kind of sensory, not deprivation, but a very low sensory feel for expression, food becomes very important. So if the guests are eating all this luscious food and the students are eating rice gruel, there's some kind of tension set up, especially if you're cooking the food for them. So over a period of time, the student food became more voluptuous. But there was a certain point where everything just balanced out. It was just right. The students were eating, that was about 1972. where the foot was just right and the balance was perfect and then it kind of got over and a little bit too luscious. So I think that that will change in time.

[13:30]

But it's an example of how how we develop certain aspects of our practice to fit our own needs in our own society. And another aspect is family practice, which in Japan, Zen practice is mostly done by monks. and then there are lay people. So there's really quite a distinction between lay people and monks, and it's just developed that way. Although, And the monks are in part supported by lay people, but lay people also practice with the monks in retreats at several times a year. They go to Sashins and so forth, but they still don't mix with the monks.

[14:41]

I hate you, they have a, Sarah, when she was there, she did Sashin in a separate building, but the monks, she didn't go into the monk's zendo, the monk's zendo is just for the monks. But people do go to practice at the monasteries. for retreats and so forth. But the whole thing is supported by the various families and family temples. And the temple family will send a son to a heiji monastery to train, and then that son will come back after a few years and take care of the family temple, inherit the family temple. So it's a kind of system, closed system in a way. And our practice is very different. Our practice is all volunteers.

[15:44]

The reason why people practice in America is because that's what they want to do. It's not a family support or a government support or even a religious support. So, Suzuki Roshi didn't impose that kind of distinction amongst practice, lay practice, or any kind of practice. Everybody just practiced. Practice was open, and if anybody wanted to practice, they could. And he just kind of watched that to see how it would go. He, you know, wasn't really a monastic priest, although he had had monastic training and had a great respect for that training. Most of his life he was a family priest.

[16:46]

So he really had a great feeling for that side of practice. In Japan, the families don't practice Zazen. You don't have the husband going to Zazen every morning, or the wife going to Zazen every morning, or the son or daughter practicing like we practice. They come to the priest. People come to the priest for advice, or for consolation, or for some kind of ... just to talk. So a priest is around day and night, and someone will come and talk, and maybe someone else will come and join. It won't necessarily be private. You know, if you're talking about your problems, someone else will come, and the whole thing will maybe become more of an open subject. People know each other very well. But Suzuki Roshi very much wanted people to sit zazen.

[17:55]

That's what his object was. And the thing about this fertile ground in America was that people wanted to sit zazen and they weren't bound by the old traditions that were so strong in Japan. So he allowed people to set up the practice the way it has evolved. And it's got lots of problems. So it's important to us how we develop practice that doesn't really exclude people or doesn't leave them on the outside, but it's really up to everyone to develop a kind of practice that works.

[19:02]

And some people have solved that or are making a solution by making a clear distinction between monks' practice here in America and lay practice. But still here, we don't make that distinction. So it gives us a different kind of problem, say, than at Zen Center in San Francisco, which makes more of a division between monks' practice and lay practice. So what we call lay people is different than what Zen Center in San Francisco call lay people, or how lay people are thought of at Green Gulch. They have a Green Gulch lay group, and now they're forming a San Francisco lay group. But our lay group is quite different because this is all we have.

[20:07]

And our practice is just these people. So we have a different kind of, slightly different kind of development when we're attacking, not attacking, but going about the problem, going about dealing with the problem in a different way. And then there's the problem of women's practice, which, although there's always been women's practice within Buddhism, the way we practice is very radical in America. And we have to see it as radical and respect it as being radical. And when the Japanese teachers came to America, it was a big problem

[21:12]

for them because in Japan women have a certain role in a certain place and the men take their role in balance with the women's role. So when you don't have that kind of way of relating to women that is traditional and you're a man in that tradition, it kind of throws you out of balance. But Suzuki Roshi did pretty well with it. At first, when I first started practicing at Sokoji Temple, the men sat on one side of the Zen bell and the women sat on the other side. And I've talked about that before, I think. That was very interesting to me. And I don't think there was any problem. they were all practicing in the same room.

[22:14]

It's not that, you know, in the synagogue the women are upstairs and the men are downstairs. And that's quite a distinction. Probably in a Japanese temple the women are outside, some boys at home, and the men are in the temple. But here, you know, he wanted to make the men's practice and women's practice equal, but he also felt the distinction between men and women. So the women sat on one side and the men sat on the other side. And whenever they got up, you know, when we get up we always bow. And so the men and women were always bowing to each other. Men and women were bowing to each other as men and women, in a certain sense. And that felt very good to me. It felt like they were recognizing each other as men and women. But then, after a while, there was some pressure to mix it up, you know, because that's what we do in America.

[23:19]

We always mix everything up. It's true. In Suzuki-ryo she used to talk about food, you know, American food and Japanese food. Japanese food is very distinct. Each piece is distinct. You know, you put some rices here, and pickles are here, and gobo is there, and vegetables are here. And you arrange each thing. And I think they even draw little pictures where things are supposed to go on a piece of paper, tablecloth. And it all gets mixed up in your stomach. You eat each thing individually, and it all gets mixed up in your stomach. But Americans mix everything up first, and then eat it. So the result is the same, but the method is different.

[24:21]

And he said, we should respect both methods. We should be able to respect both methods and make some way of including them both. But so, with men and women, we mix them up, you know, just because that's the American style. So, but you know, in America, women are so radically, women's attitude with women is so radically different. We still have traditional women's roles, but women have become so independent that we can't think about women's practice in the same way that has traditionally been thought of.

[25:23]

One thing about it is that because of the way our society is going, First, the family unit is being, because of the various factors in the work field, the family is being split apart. And the small family unit is also being split apart. You know, if there's a kind of desire for less children. If men and women get married and there are no children, they have to have a really good reason for being together. The first thing we do is we have attraction. Man has attraction for a woman and a woman has attraction for a man. And that's like getting it together. But after a while, that flash gets subdued into other activities.

[26:33]

So you don't have, it's very rare that a man and woman have the same feeling for each other after 10 years that they did in the beginning. But they have that feeling in order to get together. And then they do their various activities. They have children or set up a house and learn how to live with each other, and that all gets sublimated into the various activities that they do. If they have this love in the beginning, then that love gets spread around to all the other things, and it's more like work, you know, after a while. There should still be some love there, but it takes different forms. But if they don't have those forms to put their love into, then their love just starts devouring each other because it turns into other things. And people just eat each other up.

[27:35]

If you just keep directing your love to each other without spreading it around to other things, then it just becomes a kind of consuming kind of love. Either that or you just figure out you hate each other and you don't understand why you ever got together in the first place, and you leave. And so, because people aren't focusing on the family so much, and focusing out into other fields, the family's just pulling apart. And so there's, we find ourselves with millions of single women who ordinarily would have been married by the time they were 20 or 18. who are 35 and 40 and 50 and don't have a relationship with somebody. And the same with men. So you have a really different situation. Women that don't expect to have children, that don't necessarily expect to have a husband, and men in the same way.

[28:47]

So, how to practice, you know, with people in this kind of situation, plus people who have families and children and all of the traditional relationships. It's a kind of big porridge, you know. We stir this big porridge and try to make some amalgamation out of it, something that includes us all. In the Lotus Sutra, you know, there's this very famous passage that people have been thinking about lately, where it says that in order for a woman to become a Buddha, she has to become a man first.

[30:00]

And this really upsets a lot of people. It's a male chauvinist Buddhists who wrote this sutra. is a big bone of contention. And it's a kind of meditation study for people. How do they do that? Well, I don't think that a woman has to become a man before she can become a Buddha. Any more than a man has to become a woman before he can become a Buddha. You know, we have two sides of our personality. And they include man and woman. So someone manifests as a man, but there is still a feminine part. And a woman, someone manifests as a woman, but there's still a masculine part. And what we do is fulfill the other part through a partner.

[31:07]

That's usual. because you're a man, you fulfill your feminine part by having a relationship with a woman. And if you're a woman, you fulfill your masculine part by having a relationship with a man. But say someone who is a monk doesn't have a partner, and that person has to fulfill both sides. In other words, has to balance both sides within themselves. And if we have a successful relationship with another person, we should first balance those two sides within ourselves so that we're not depending on the other person to fulfill that for us. I think that they just left part of that out of the Lotus Sutra. Whoever wrote the Lotus Sutra should have also included men as well as women. I don't think that's what they meant, but I don't really care so much about that statement.

[32:09]

I think that it's wrong. Somebody made a mistake in the sutra. Or it has some deeper meaning that I don't understand. But if we depend on sutras too much, we should depend on sutras. is a valuable guide, you know, for us. But in Zen practice, we respect the sutras, but we don't depend on them so much. And we should also be able to find something wrong with them, if there's something wrong. You know, in China, when Buddhism came into China, for the first 500 years, The Chinese depended on citrus for their understanding and practice. And all these citrus kept pouring into China for 500 years from India.

[33:16]

And after a while, The Chinese say, well, these sutras, you know, there are a lot of sutras, and they all contradict each other. One sutra says this, and the other sutra says that. And they don't jive with each other. And if the sutra is supposed to be the word of Buddha, how come they're not jiving? How come there are these contradictions? But they said, but it must be because the sutra is the word of Buddha. So you have a big problem if you cling to words. And if you cling to, you know, if you decide something, like the sutra is Buddha's true word. And that's a kind of faith, it's wonderful, you know. But you should also be able to read the sutra by, let me say, turning the sutra, instead of the sutra turning us. To just understand the letter of the sutra means that the sutra is turning you.

[34:23]

But if you understand the meaning of the sutra, then you're turning the sutra. Sometimes Dogen would change things in the sutra, because he understood it, something according to his own understanding, which was more accurate than the way someone wrote down the sutra. We have to be very careful that we don't just start changing things in the sutra. But sometimes a sutra has some weak point or can be expressed maybe bitter. After all, the sutras were written down by people according to their understanding of Buddhism. And weird people too. Just like the people that wrote down the sutras.

[35:25]

They were extraordinary people that wrote down the sutras. And their understanding was extraordinary. But I think that it's also, you know, the understanding in the sutras that men and women can practice equally. So I think that we should pay more attention to that understanding than to the understanding that discriminates. Sometimes, you know, we say, we feel embarrassed by that kind of statement, and we try to justify it some way.

[36:34]

Or we say, well, even though that says that, we don't believe it. Even though the sutra says women must become a man before she can become a Buddha. We say, but we don't feel that way. But actually, there's something in us that does feel that way, that we don't know about. And we say that we don't think that way, but in many ways we really do. We really feel that women should become men before they can become Buddha. I think only women understand the difference. I mean, the difference of how we think. Not being a woman, it's very hard to know how a woman feels. And men can say something which they think is completely free of discrimination, but

[37:47]

Because a woman knows how she feels, she can see it, but it's not. So, this area, it's come a long way. We've come a long way, I think, in that kind of equality. But it takes a lot more fine analysis and work before we really understand it. In Zazen, there are no men and women. So we have this opportunity to realize that basically there are no men and women. In Zazen, there's just people or whatever you call them. But when we start moving again in the world, than there are men and women. So we can really understand our equality in Zazen.

[38:55]

But what we need to do is to understand our equality within our difference. And this is what Suzuki Roshi was always talking about, when it came to men and women. Because men and women are different, they're equal. If we want to be equal in the usual sense, then everyone has to either become men or everyone has to become women. That's the usual sense of equality. In Buddhism we say the mouse is equal to the elephant. According to the usual sense of equality, mice have to become elephants. in order to be all equal, in order for them both to be equal, or elephants have to become mice. But we have to understand that mice are equal to elephants.

[39:59]

And men and women are equal because men are men and women are women. They have to be equal within their difference. So, we don't want women who are men. We want to see women who are women. We want to see men who are men. So men have had quite a long history of being able to practice together as men and find out what that is. And women haven't had the opportunity so much to practice together as women in this situation to find out what that is. What are we as women? So I feel very good about our women's group who is looking at who they are as women.

[41:02]

How can we practice as women? Really important. Really a good opportunity. and a very positive step in making the distinction, you know, recognizing the distinction. Yes, these are women here and these are men here. And men should grow up to be men and women should grow up to be women. And when women are women and men are men completely, then they're equal. And in Zazen there's no difference between men and women. even though we have different organs, different psyche, zazen is zazen for everybody, same. So the picture of our practice, what it looks like, is very different from a traditional kind of practice.

[42:17]

But the essence, we shouldn't lose the essence. The essence is the same. As long as we have the essence and not lose it, our practice will work. One of the problems within this kind of way is that if we accommodate too much Buddhism too much to our own standards, then we lose it. We just water it down until it's what we want it to be. So we have to respect what Buddhism is, and it has to be very firm. Otherwise we just move it out of the way, you know. We stand up there on the pedestal instead of the practice. So we don't really want to raise it up on a pedestal, so to speak, but there's a certain practice that's what we call ideal, and what we're always practicing with is the ideal and the actual, and balancing the ideal with the actual.

[43:38]

And these tendencies are always in some kind of relationship to each other. And if the ideal, when the ideal is in the ascendancy, then we have a lot of monks, because it's ideal practice. And when the actual is in the ascendancy, then we have a lot of real life, so to speak, but it doesn't have any guidance. Things as they are, but without any guidance. So, there has to be a real balance between those two factors. On the one hand, to understand what Buddhism is. On the other hand, to be able to live our life within that understanding.

[44:44]

There was a monk from Taitokaji who, when I was coming out of Tassajara, Last week, he was going in, and his name was Soho, and he was the Jikijutsu at Daitoku-ji Monastery. Daitoku-ji is the head temple of the Rinzai sect. And Jikijutsu is like the head monk who directs the practice in the Zendo. And I asked him if he knew a monk named Gitai. And he said, oh yes, he's my assistant. Those people who Gitai visited us several years ago stayed with us for a while. People that were around then knew him. He said, but I'm here. Nobody knows I'm in America. He said, I was supposed to be going. They think I'm in Japan someplace.

[45:53]

I took a trip to America. But he said, he came over and visited us last Monday and looked around and he said, he was very surprised at our practice. And he looked at the carpenters, he says, who's doing the work? I said, well, the carpenters are our members here, people who practice. He said, amazing. He said, and do they understand all of the stuff about carpentry and putting, you know. I said, yes, they know all that. They're real carpenters. It's amazing. But in Japan, carpenters just do carpentry work. And monks do Zen practice. And lay people do lay people. Everybody has their thing that they do. And they don't so much go across borders, you know. To some extent, they do. But traditionally, you know, everyone has their task.

[46:56]

And they do that as well as they can. And then if you want something done, you go to a carpenter. You know, if you want some woodworking done. If you want some other kind of work done, you go to that person. So there are all these little trades which are interconnected and keep society going in a certain way. But in America, the students do everything. You know, we do carpentry and building and gardening. We do the whole thing ourselves. Maybe that's partly my idea. I like that idea. But it's quite different. He says in Japan, he said, everybody's very conservative. Japanese Buddhism, he says, is very conservative. So in America, Buddhism is very radical. And you find people lean toward the left, mostly, are people who practice Zen, you know. quite different attitudes.

[48:05]

And I said, he said, well, I think it would be good if people came to Japan and studied Buddhism more, and to get some feeling of how it is, you know. And I said, well, I think that's a good idea. I think that younger people will learn the language, Japanese language, and be more flexible in time in order to be able to do that. And he thought, yeah, that's a good idea. And I was carrying Daniel on my back at the time. And he asked, he says, this is your disciple, huh? I said, yeah. He says, when he gets a little older, you can send him over to me. I said, OK. So anyway, those are some thoughts I had on some of the problems of our practice and things that we think about and need to deal with, and some of the differences between our practice and traditional practice.

[49:21]

Do you have any questions? It seems to me that American character, if there's one word, it is equality. And I would think that a big problem all along and in the future is going to be how we deal with the hierarchy or the authority part of the practice. Do you have any...? Well, okay. Japanese... Zen practice comes out of a very hierarchical system, and it's based on a kind of medieval feudal system. Our history in America started off with democracy, you know, and that's only about 300 to 200 years old. not very old.

[50:25]

And Japan has had a kind of monarchical and feudal background. And so the tradition is based kind of on that feudal system. And some of our own practice, of course, is based on that same feudal system because we inherited it. So we have to make some kind of amalgamation of those, slowly. If we suddenly make everything democratic, we lose something because we throw out the baby with the bathwater because the baby's been developed that way, you know? And so, little by little, things will change. is bound to change. We can't continue that kind of system. But we have to absorb that kind of system before we can change in some way.

[51:36]

We can't just suddenly decide how things are going to be because it's cutting off something too much, too quickly. And since the practice is based on that, the hierarchical system, it has to be dealt with And we're dealing with it. Bob, Robert had something to say. It seems that with the transmission of Buddhism from the West, that we run into this problem Right.

[52:48]

And maybe it's even more important for us than it is for people to stay in more conservative cultures like China and Japan. We have to get to the bottom of it. That's right. I agree wholeheartedly with what you say. That's why, you know, we have this problem of dwelling on our problems. What I'm trying to get us to do is to dwell on Buddhism. If you dwell on your problems, then all you have is problems. if you dwell on Buddhism, then you have some way of dealing with your problems through Buddhism. So, that's why, you know, I'm asking people when they come for practice talk to talk about Buddhism, talk about practice. Then, within that talk, your problems come out, and you can see your problems through the eyes of practice. or the eyes of... through the dharma eye.

[53:55]

And that's how we can develop ourself in our practice and see how... But if we just talk about problems, then we're just dealing with problems, you know. It's just always within that sphere. And that's never ending. If you want to, you know, you can start looking around for all these problems and never get out of them. It doesn't mean that, you know, if you put your attention on to practice and dharma and finding out about Buddhism, then it doesn't mean that you wipe away your problems, you know, or that your problems are seething underneath, but that your problems are taken up into this context and you see them with some clear eye. Pam had something she wanted to say. I just wanted to make a comment. There's a possibility that the Lotus Sutra was precisely right, if you take it in its historical and cultural context.

[55:04]

Back when it was written, women were mostly childs, and they took every action from their relationship with another person, either their family or their husband. And perhaps what the Lotus Sutra is saying is a woman must become a man, and then a woman independent person in order to become a Buddha, which is a very rational thought. And at the time, women were not independent people. Some of them were, but most of them were not. So one cannot always ignore the cultural aspects of when the thing was written. Yeah, I think the cultural aspects really determine a lot of the way those things were written, definitely. I had always thought that the idea that a woman must become a man in order to become a Buddha had to do with the concept of hierarchy of evolutionary forms, I mean, spiritually speaking.

[56:08]

And that a man, that a woman is considerably inferior in their concept to a man, therefore, progressing from animal forms to the female form, finally to what would be considered the highest form of consciousness. I thought that was what was meant. That is what was meant. It's what we don't agree with anymore, also. Yeah, we just don't agree with it. No! Well, we know that that's the historical context, even so we don't want to perpetuate that kind of thinking. It's like a point of not perpetuating Yeah, I think that's so. We don't want to perpetuate that. Apparently you said it since last week, and I've been hearing about it all week. You said that one of the things about a woman's practice is that it's very hard for a woman to stand alone. And I certainly agree.

[57:10]

From my own experience, it's very hard because the societal conditioning of all women is to be in association with other persons. And that's not so true for men, nor has it ever been, but I think it's possible now, as it has not been in the past. That point, you know, is that when you see it when women get into certain positions where they're really on top of something, you know, in a high position, and they haven't had the kind of societal support to be there before. And so they find themselves in a very queasy position, kind of like vertigo, where, you know, they back down. So often they back down. And you say, well, why did you back down? Isn't that what you wanted? You know? But even though we have, even though they have some support, you have some support, you don't feel it, and it's not a basis, a real basis It's not a strong basis yet.

[58:13]

Well, ultimately we have to take it because it exists. You have to take it, yeah. That's important to be able to take it. I also think we shouldn't dwell on that aspect. As a woman who has stood up on a lot, I remember myself dwelling on women who don't. And I guess that was in the idea of role models. Yeah. So I agree we shouldn't dwell on that either. But these are all factors. And it's good to understand the various factors. And it's good for us to be made aware of them.

[59:18]

I just wonder about the influence of Hindu religion around Buddhism and its growing when Buddhism was very young. And, you know, after Buddha died and everything and all the sutras were left Hindus, just as we do American concept of Buddhism. And the Hindus clearly stated over and over and over again, before a woman could ever attain enlightenment, they have to become, be, go through reincarnation, become physical. Yeah. It was very strong. Well, I think that that's a strong influence. That was always a strong influence. And The esoteric Buddhism, you know, as a kind of going back to Hindu, taking a lot of the Hindu pantheon into Buddhism and transforming it.

[60:23]

But, yeah, that's a big influence. I agree with you there. Very cultural. We just don't have that kind of cultural element. So we have to weigh things, you know. It's a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun to do. Yes? I don't think what we're dealing with so much is the Hindu or the Japanese or the Chinese influence. I think what we're dealing with is our American socializations. And that's what's there a lot more than, well, our practices.

[60:58]

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