So the drill for this second part of the morning session is that we first ask our presenters to make any further comments that they have. that either came to mind as they were listening to the others or that they now remember they wanted to say earlier. Relatively brief comments so that once the panel has exhausted itself in these labors, we can open the floor to questions or comments. from the audience. So why don't we just proceed in the same order that we did with the presentations and ask Gil. Do you have a switch? You may have a switch on the back of your mic. I'm turned on.

[01:10]

So a couple of things occurred to me listening to the other two. Thank you very much for your presentations. And one is that we have to be careful about generalizations. If we look at, think about Zen as being, I think it's wonderful to think of it as subculture and think of it as counterculture. But I a little bit reacted to the constant referral to the counterculture being the representatives of Zen in the 60s because I think there were a lot of other people as well involved who weren't necessarily part of the counterculture. And Blanche is pointing it herself. So I think there was other things going on as well. And I don't want to, I certainly support, I mean, go along with a lot of the generalizations, if you understand them as that. But I think that it's important to also break it all down to different elements within the generalizations. In that regard, I think that the counter-cultural element, if we use that language, of Zen or Buddhism will always be there.

[02:21]

And it's one of the things that perhaps fuels the continued development and presence of Buddhism or Zen in any society at all. And the counterculture aspect, that aspect which really questions the values of a culture, that separates itself from the underlying values of a culture or steps out of it, is a very important part of Buddhism in all times. And I think zazen itself is a counter-cultural activity. Zazen itself is an activity that helps us to let go of or step out of the world of culture and values and conditionings that our culture has. And so there's always going to be this tension, I think, between what we can call the counterculture and culture, that the assimilation of Zen in America has to happen. It's part of one of things that fuels it and keeps it going. But I think we'll always see that within individuals and subgroups, we'll find people who are continuing to fuel it and develop it as a kind of

[03:28]

a subversive element, as an element which questions and offers a radical alternative to any cultural conditioning whatsoever. I believe that Zazen, that the mind of non-attachment, is an alternative to any ways in which the mind is caught up in what we can call constructed activities or conditioned activities. But the degree to which it is involved in constructed and conditioned activities, I think it's very important for us to look at the assumptions that go into that, and where Zen in America and anywhere is very much a big part and parcel of constructed activities. We do that to ourselves, we're part of a culture, but do we understand the underlying assumptions that feed into our particular construction of of Zen, of Buddhism, and I think conferences like this, HOPE, is an attempt to try to begin questioning and looking under the surface of our assumptions to understand how we construct it when we come out of the Zazen mind and construct what we do.

[04:34]

And then how do we, as a subculture, how do we, do we have responsibilities as citizens of the larger culture? As subculture, I take it to mean that we're not separate from removed from our culture, but part of our culture, an element in the culture. And I would like to think that part of what we do as Buddhists or Zen Buddhists in the West is where participants, as citizens of our society, engage in some of the bigger dialogue and issues that are involved in our culture. Last week, two weeks ago, I was invited to a meeting at the ACLU in Sacramento as a Buddhist teacher. And I thought it was fascinating that the Buddhist was invited to sit at the table with the interfaith discussion about the kind of civil rights issues that the ACLU deals with. So do we participate in some of the larger issues of dialogue in our culture? How do we do it? And how do we do it in a way that comes out of our practice of Zen? Am I on?

[05:36]

Yes? Now I'm on. Okay. Thanks for clarifying, because I think the mainstream is the issue. And even though maybe you weren't a hippie blanche, you were definitely politically maybe outside the mainstream a little. So there was that attraction, as you say, to moving in ways that would make the culture, the main culture, the dominant culture, healthier. You know, whether it was from people who had seen Asian culture during the war, spent time in Japan, or politically active, or the academic community which was interested in these things. The other thing I wanted to go back to was in this idea of centralized processing of information and the distribution of Buddhism over the Internet. You know, I sit up in the mountains about 200 miles from here and have access to podcasts and conversations with so many Buddhists. I recently heard about, on one of the listservs for Buddhist teachers, the first online Jukai, the online precept ceremony.

[06:45]

And at first I thought, you know, I had been thinking about this as kind of a degradation in the practice. But after Wendy's talk about salvific images, And the image of the bodhisattva carrying the resonance, the energetic resonance, I thought, well, now why couldn't that happen over the internet? So it's interesting to think about how people who do not have access to a practice are able to have an experience. They actually sit together with video cams on their computers. They do sitting together, and then they have their first online jukai. The last thing I wanted to talk about was something that Jeff referred to about psychology and Zen, something I overlooked as a psychologist, but I look at the history of Buddhism and in India, where Shakyamuni began teaching, you see qualities of the Hindu religion in Buddhism. And then when it traveled to China, you see qualities of Taoism coming to light.

[07:52]

So this change, as you describe, of marrying something in the culture. There is something that Buddhism, it's like a germ that gets into the culture and joins up with another. and changes. And going to Japan, certainly the culture of Bushido, the samurai culture, and the Shinto deities were incorporated into the Buddhist practice. And in America, certainly it does seem that the intersection has been not only with the counterculture in terms of political activism and wishing for development of awareness, but also with psychological awareness and self-help movements. So I think this is natural. It did not join with Christianity as it moved in so much, I don't think. Maybe the Unitarians have really picked it up. But it has really begun to marry with the terminology of psychology and self-help.

[08:55]

So I think that's the natural, it finds a partner wherever it goes as a way of becoming part of the dominant culture. Thankfully, I don't have very much to say. I've probably said enough already. I'll just make a few very brief comments then, just to sort of piggyback on that. Actually, someone who came up and talked to me right after I finished speaking said some interesting things from a Catholic perspective, and I do want to mention that actually there has been a growing overlap or exchange between Christianity and also Judaism. with uh... with buddhism and maybe particularly zen and uh... some very fruitful things have come from that and i expect more will come from it but indeed at the same time we have to say that there's much less mixing than there was for instance with uh... uh... well with hinduism with shinto with daoism and particularly with confucianism which often gets left out of the equation uh... and with uh... local spirit cults in southeast asia that sort of thing there hasn't been nearly as much

[09:59]

breaking down of the wall between Christianity and Buddhism as it has been between Buddhism and these other religions. But that said, it's still early days and we don't know what is to come. One thing that person did mention to me, I just want to make a few clarifications because I was speaking in broad generalizations just for the nature of our forum here. But when I say that meditation was absent, Really, I was referring specifically to Zazen, which is a particular type of formless meditation that has no particular object. It just is being aware of what is. That's very different from very legitimate, but different forms of meditation, such as in the Catholic tradition, meditation on the rosary or adoration of the Eucharist and such. of a certain type has a long history in America, but meditation of the type that Zen brought to the table does not, and that's what I meant. Also, of course, the Catholics had monasteries here and continue to, and they have added something vital to the religious life of the nation. But at the same time, I think the general read for historians of American religion, who are the people who train me, is that Catholicism has mainly not been the dominant story, and so they can't

[11:09]

claim historically to have been the mainstream. We can see this particularly because of the great amount of anti-Catholic agitation that we saw over the centuries, and it's really only been rather recently, even maybe the last 50 years, that we've seen a great lessening of that, which I'm very thankful for. Not that meditation and monasticism have been absent, and not that those people who were involved in particular forms of them didn't contribute, but nonetheless I think there's a dominant non-meditative, non-monastic, primarily Protestant-derived mainstream that everybody in America, for better or for worse, has had to be in conversation with or running away from as quickly as possible at certain times, particularly if you're a witch in Salem or something like that. So just to clarify a few of my remarks. And let's have some Q&A, I suppose. Can you hear me?

[12:17]

I'll speak up. Can you hear me now? It's on now. Yeah, obviously it's on now. As I listen to this, my name is John Wilson, and I've been part of the Zinn Center for a number of years. It looks like a whole week, as I look around, as we're all gathered. I'm an economist, as many of you know. In all of this discussion, I never heard even the word mentioned, economics. And when I think, particularly Jeff, of my reading of the counterculture groups in our history, one of the key elements to them that I think led to their dying off, or so on, was their inability to integrate into the economy. Now you take the subcultures, and you gave the Mormons, Their success was they created their own economy that worked with our existing economy. And the amazing thing to me about the Mormons, when you study how they've done that in their economic approach, is they not only solve the issue of productivity and efficiency, which is on one side of the economy, but the other issue is redistribution.

[13:33]

And they have their own redistribution program. Very effective. But when you look at the subcultures, I mean, if you look at the countercultures, they existed initially because they had enough resources internally to sustain themselves. Or they were saving grants like capital campaigns from the mainstream that allowed them to go one or two generations. Or they tried to create a subsistence, primarily agricultural, which would sustain them for a couple of generations. But the ones that went from being a counterculture to a subculture resolve this issue. And when I look at the Zen Center today, I think that's where we are. I think the whole issue of how you integrate in the economy. Now, we all recognize that the Zen practice, the Zen Center, is at what I call the marginal cutting edge. But it's primarily through mindfulness and work, which is an outgrowth of the psychological approach.

[14:38]

How do we as individuals reshape our thinking and our behavior as we go out into the mainstream economic institutions. Or second, we've done it in the environmental area with greening movement. And third, we kind of emphasize how do we sustain and maintain our use of natural resources with mindfulness and less consumption materialism. Now those are all well and good. but we really haven't addressed what are the subsidy-critical economic issues that we confront today that have come to the surface with the collapse of the economy. I don't have to reiterate this. We all know it. We're living through it. But the question to me is, what from the Zen practice addresses the issue of social justice, human rights, the very foundations that shape our mainstream economies? And I'm not just speaking of capitalism. or socialism, I think we have to move beyond our communism, which I view as more political than an economic system.

[15:45]

Communism as an economy is really a socialist model. We move beyond that, we ask ourselves, what is the future of Zen as we contemplate our relationship with mainstream culture? And probably because I'm an economist, I say, let's begin with the economy, which is the toughest. in my judgment to resolve. But I think that we have to address. And if we look at the center today, what we are in the early days, I've been part of it for 35 years. So I've gone through Greens, I've gone through all the businesses. Back in the days, Richard Baker, And I chaired the OFAB outside board for 25 years, financial advisory board. We used to call it the rubber stamp board for Richard Baker. He'd come in and say, I just bought this, this, and this. What do you think? We'd say, well, what do you mean, what do you think? You've already made the decision.

[16:45]

We then moved into the period where we really moved away from trying to create businesses that would support the Zen Center. We're now back to that model. of looking through our capital campaign to create a base which we can sustain ourselves as an institution going forward, which is one model. But I think at another level is not just on the sustainability of the Zen Center of San Francisco, but as our role in speaking out on the current economic issues that are being debated and what do we have to contribute. to basically the issues of an economy that's sufficient, an economy that achieves social justice, an economy that walks up to the issue of fundamental rights that form the basis of our economy. Did you want to address that to someone in particular or? Well, I think all three panelists are, McGill knows what I'm talking about because he sent me on a course

[17:54]

He's seen some of my writing and he's got me thinking hard and working hard. So Gil, I thank you for that. So Gil, you're honestly thinking along some of these lines. I think all three panelists, I'd be interested in their reaction. Quick reactions from the panelists? Really two questions in front of us, right? One is about the economics of the institutions, Zen institutions. The other is what those institutions could contribute to a larger thinking about the economy, right? Those are two distinct. I don't want to make it too, I'd rather hear what you say. What we as Zen practitioners, believers, can contribute to the broader issue of the economy. Not just focus solely on sustainability of the Zen center, but the broader one, yes. I want to say something about the sustainability first, very briefly, just that maybe we could look to the Shilai model.

[19:08]

down in L.A., which is sending its priests to university to become social workers and teachers and so on, which actually addresses the second issue, which is how do we help people in the world, actually, with our profession. And so as we train people and educate them to their own awareness, I think we have to start there and also encourage them. Certainly, it's always been an issue for Zen and Buddhism. I think it was either Keizan or one of the early Soto Zen teachers who said that A teacher does not just depend on the ability to teach, but on their supporters, financial supporters. It's always been so. And at this point, I think to get to Jeff's position and also to get us better integrated, making sure, I think in Japan as well, I mean, this is my impression, some of the priests there are working. They aren't supported by their temples. They're working in the world. And I know Hojo-san himself goes to the jail to offer counseling in Japan.

[20:10]

But there are others who actually have to have jobs. And I think that it's not a failure. of the priest to do that, to rely on that rather than services as a way of income. Go ahead. I'll address this very briefly. I indeed tried to gesture a bit towards economic situations, which I feel are very important. That's why I talked a bit about the proliferation of media coming out of Zen, the diversification of institutions, the way in which Zen now primarily has a very urban and professional profile, and also this talk about Zen at work or mindfulness at work. I think these definitely have clear implications for interaction with the economy. And I'll just mention that actually, you know, someone said to me afterwards, again, made a very useful comment, something I agree very much with, and that is that part of the story of Zen over the last 50 years has been moving from a countercultural

[21:18]

very unique form of Zen based on Zazen, which is actually not what Zen has typically been based on, and has been incorporating ever more selective Japanese material, particularly in recent years, as it has become Sort of as groups here have become more tied in with the groups back home. So particularly through the Soto Shu this has been going on very much. It's been a lot of dialogue. And in some cases we see simultaneously a growing Americanization over 50 years and a growing Japanification over 50 years as more elements that didn't make it in the initial transmission have now come to find certain places in Americans. And I find that personally Very interesting. I've written about that in other contexts. But one thing, for the economic issue here, what I'll say is that Zen in Japan is based on the business model. It is not based on the original countercultural utopian model that our Zen was originally based on.

[22:20]

These are not commiserate models. And as we have shifted from one towards the other, that's part of that growing, ironically, Japanification, which is a type of Americanization at the same time. So, Zen temples primarily are not engaged in Zazen. They're primarily engaged in providing services to the laity. And the laity are donors. We might, let's be crass for a minute here, we might say that they are the consumers. And the Zen priests are the marketers who market Zen and Zen services to the consumer populace who decides to come to the temple and partake of those services because they believe that they're beneficial to them. And that's not unlike, in some ways, the model that we're seeing now. whereas Zen markets itself to the wider American society as being almost, I mean, mindfulness is like a panacea for everything at this point. It will help you to eat better, it will help you to lose weight, it will help you to have a better sex life, it will help you at your job, it will help you deal with your stress, with your migraines. I'm sure eventually it will help with erectile dysfunction.

[23:25]

I mean, that's just how things are these days. That's kind of the way they're going. I am, of course, being a little glib here. Don't kill me. So that's part of that shifting towards a partial business model, which is closer to a normal Japanese model. This is not to say that Zen hasn't played countercultural roles at times in Japan, that Zazen hasn't been important to Japanese Zen, but Zen's history over 800 plus years has been very different than I think we tend to imagine it, or at least especially how we imagined it 50 years ago. And to some extent this change I'm sure is painful for people, but also it does move us closer to interesting potentialities that maybe were not in the first transmissions that the tradition might still hold for us in changing times. In terms of social justice, human rights, I'll leave those aside. I'm not personally a Zen teacher, so I'll allow my more qualified co-panelists to discuss those. I think that maybe coming this afternoon, is that right, Lou?

[24:26]

We can talk about some integration of human rights. So I'd like to also make some comments, thank you John, about the economics thing. At the moment I'm less interested in what Zen has to offer economic theory for our world, which I think is one of your questions, but rather what economic theory has to offer Zen. Because I think that the economic system of support of how Zen or Zen institutions are going to operate is going to have a big impact on how Zen is taught. And I don't think it's a hermetically sealed relationship. I think that economics and the way it's offered economically will impact how we offer Zen, the practice of Zen, the teachings of Zen, what's emphasized and all that. And I think there's certainly very powerful forces in this country moving towards a greater business model, greater professionalization, greater commercialization, monetization of the Dharma that goes on.

[25:28]

Some of it you see at Zen Center as well. Zen Center itself depends in part on various businesses. It's a growing number of workshops that it's doing at the Sahara and elsewhere that are charging. I think these are all healthy and good things, but I think with it comes a kind of commercialization of it all. And what I'd like to see is, I'd like to see economic diversity. I'd like to see a wide range of economic ways in which the program things are offered. When I went to Japan, yes, there is a kind of way in which maybe there's a customer relationship, client relationship with the membership perhaps. However, there's also plenty of, my experience in Japan was that I practiced there for a year and no one asked me for money. I lived in monasteries, I lived in sashins, and it was offered freely to me, completely freely. In fact, not only was it offered freely, but sometimes they gave me money. when I was there. And so what I'd like to see is that we think a little bit very carefully about the economic model of support for Zen in this country, and not think of just one option or one model, but think of a variety of models, because each model teaches something different.

[26:45]

And so the free model, offered freely, teaches one thing, which is very important to convey in Buddhism, The commercial model teaches something else, which I would argue also teaches something very good. And it shouldn't be one or the other, but it should be we find some creative way to hold them all together. Okay, this is something of great interest to me and I would just like to throw into the mix conversations I've been attending at Columbia run by Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize economist there and a friend of his. Prabhat Patnaik in India.

[27:47]

And part of what they've been pushing for for quite some time is sequestering certain areas of the economy from what's presently in the market, keeping it out of the market, like health care and certain educational services and on, you know, we can all think of things that we'd like sequestered from the market. And while this seemed very fringe, it's now becoming, with the collapse, it's now becoming more mainstream and Joseph Stiglitz does have the ear of the president. So I think one thing that we could do is, you know, be part of this, you know, throw our collective weight or non-weight behind some of these changes that are being debated very seriously and also the trend towards including what Joseph Stiglitz calls the global, what is it, global 180 or something, instead of the G8, including all countries in these discussions, because things do need to change and are on the verge of changing, I think, but it needs voices and input from all sorts of different groups.

[29:02]

So, I don't know, that's something that would be exciting to me as a development in Zen. Buddhism in general. Could we get the mic over here? It's going to Yvonne, I think. It went right by Yvonne? Yvonne is in front of you. OK. I think some of you know that I have a keen interest in language and how the language we use affects the way we see the world. And I think in the context of teaching and how we're supported and all of that, thinking of money as a form of energy can be quite useful. And my experience has been that when there isn't some exchange of energy between me and the other person that I'm working with, something goes awry. So I think that's, and I also observe that we as Americans don't like to talk about money.

[30:09]

We don't, for, you know, multiple of reasons. I also want to bring up the distinction between, in religious traditions, between exoteric traditions and esoteric traditions. And I think the distinction is really important Esoteric traditions have, in my experience, far more in common with each other. For example, if you look at some of the guidelines around conduct in Zen, and you look at the rule of Saint Benedict, they're very close. I went to a conference once of people from different spiritual traditions, but we were all from what would be designated as esoteric traditions held at Snowmass, a Benedictine monastery. And what we discovered was that we had far more in common that we could talk about than we imagined.

[31:15]

So anyway, I just want to throw out as a language distinction or refinement, when we're talking about religion, are we talking about esoteric a strata or are we talking about exoteric strata? Are we ready for another question? Yeah, the floor is open. Okay. I'm sorry. Okay. So this is a different topic and I've been listening to this discussion and having question, Gil was talking about leadership and developing leadership. And one of the things I was talking to actually Wendy about not being pigeonholed, and I don't want to be pigeonholed, however, I think the question of gender is one that's very important. And how we, what are the unique challenges of women and men, and how do each of these topics impact that.

[32:22]

For example, I was struck by Sojin Roshi's comment of the ember, that is a teacher as an ember, and that that ember takes a light. And there are different challenges and circumstances that I think impact women and men in the process of that ember taking light. So I'm wondering if you would be willing to address some of the topics that we've talked about in terms of the differences of men and women's experience. Could I ask for a clarification? Given that our topic this morning is Zen, the way it is today, I'm guessing that what you're driving at is, how are we doing, in effect? How are we doing it? We can just focus on leadership. How is leadership, for example, being supported? What are the differences? How is this happening now? And people who are in Zen groups but aren't up at the table may want to chime in on this issue.

[33:38]

I'll lean into this a little more, the topic as well. I think we're trying. We're very trying, actually. We're trying very hard to include, and we see some of the limitations of the inclusion. In this workshop, we've tried very hard, I think, to have representation, and, you know, it's come out the way it's come out. And I, myself, think that there are very, very deep-rooted, I could probably add a few more berries, deep-rooted difficulties. I've noticed, for myself, that Women have different issues that need to be addressed by Zen. Women have a need to ingratiate. And sometimes teachers, and maybe sometimes male teachers, don't see that that's an ego position, that they're hiding and going through some bit. and being nice and ingratiating and not stepping forward to give talks and so on.

[34:44]

So maybe they need to be pushed forward. Traditionally, Zen is about stepping back and being selfless, but I think women know how to do that fairly well, in fact, to their detriment. And I think to hear women's voices is very important. And this is a unique opportunity, I think, in the West for us to be aware of this factor. I've also noticed that The culture of Zen having, as we've inherited in the West, has been the inheritance of the male order. the teachings, the male ancestors, the teachings that have addressed male issues. And so we have inherited completely the male order and know very little about how nuns practiced. So women, and Yvonne referred to this, when she first was at Zenzenter, she was practicing internally as a man. And that would work well in that setting, which was a male culture. passed from man to man and with very little reference to how women actually practiced and women did practice.

[35:47]

So I think that that's an issue that we need to uncover is how did they practice differently and what did they address differently in the ways in their forms of practice. The third thing I would say is just about the unconscious material about how difficult women can seem to a male culture. Gosh, we have these feelings and we express them and I don't want to make too many generalizations about how women may differ, but just being a woman, our differences can stand out more and make us seem more difficult to a male audience. So I personally encounter that, and I think other women encounter that issue as well. That there's a certain, you know, I remember when I was walking with my grandson, And we were riding the train, which he loved to do. And at the train station, I pointed to the flowers. He was three at the time. And I said, oh, look at the flowers today. Aren't they beautiful? He said, no, Grandma. Cars are beautiful. And I realize that there's a different way that the male mind works, and it actually has permeated the structure of the world we live in.

[36:55]

And it's pretty unconscious. So the more we can make it conscious, so thank you for the question, and the more we can encounter it in ourselves, I think that better we'll get along. There was someone over here who was waiting. Did you want to chime in on this question? And then we'll go back. OK. Sorry. OK. Sorry, it's very important for me to say something. So a woman, this is an example, and it addresses a creative solution. A woman, a friend of mine, last year said, we have all these people living in Zen Center, they're residents, there's many like smart people, they have many skills, but they're not supported to fulfill

[38:08]

sort of a complete existence with the outside world in an economic way. And she suggested, she told me an idea she had, which was, well, why doesn't Zen Center leverage its archive skill? Like, it's all these people that have been here before, have made success in the world, and know how to start businesses, know how to run businesses, and know how to, like, create profit. in a way that maintains a connection to being a resident and existing in a resident program and also feeding back energy in the form of money to the community for sustainability and to also address the ingratitude or to put oneself aside out of ego. My friend does this, I think, not out of not out of any manipulation, but out of not feeling entirely supported, and also feeling a deep fear, and actually not having a way to express this capacity that she has.

[39:26]

And I feel like that's fundamentally a part of what Zen is about, and it's like, it's unmanifested, and there's such a great potential in all these residents, and so there's a creative solution, and it's also from a woman, and it's also from a woman who hasn't been able to speak it, and isn't here today because she's working on a private, personal project, because, in my opinion, the avenue for her expression wasn't opened. And that's not to say it's anyone's fault. It's just the way it was. I have one brief comment, and then I have a question for all the panelists.

[40:28]

The brief comment is about the Zen of this, Zen of that, Zen art, Zen sex, and so on. I think some of that is just a thought. There was a panel at the Association for Asian Studies meeting this past spring, and the same, it actually was about Zen advertising, and this came up. And I think some of this viral nature of the word may have something to do with the very nature of the word itself, that Zen is an unusual word. It's a Z-E-N, a three-letter Z word. that is fun to say. If it was, if we call ourselves Majamaka Buddhists, it's just hard to imagine John Stewart saying, this is your moment of Majamaka. It doesn't work quite the same way. So that's my, I do think the word itself has some pizzazz. You notice the Z's there. Z words are special. Anyway, my question has to do with, and Jeff started to address this a little bit in his comments about, in response to the audience member's comments about Catholicism and so on, and that is the subculture, countercultural model, what that seems to me to overlook to a certain extent is

[41:40]

the transnational nature of the tradition. And Catholicism is a better example, probably, than Mormonism. All of the utopian movements you mentioned were sui generis American movements, or, well, not totally, Puritanism and so on, but the ongoing cultural flows back and forth and exchanges were not as prominent as in the case of Catholicism. And Catholicism, however much it was a subculture and a marginalized culture within the United States, back in the Vatican was not. And there was that ongoing contact. And my question isn't so much about thinking about this theoretically, but I'm wondering, we're talking about the present state of Zen in the United States, and what I hear very little of is a reflection on the ongoing relationship with the mothership, with the tradition back in Japan. And it's as if to me, it sounds to me oftentimes as we talk about Zen, that it's like the period of the true Dharma, the imitative Dharma, and the counterfeit Dharma, that with the death of the founder, the period of exchange has ended and you're on your own.

[42:51]

And I'm wondering how you all envision and enact an ongoing relationship with the Japanese tradition, which is also changing, as Jeff mentioned, in response to what we're doing here. That's my question. Thanks. This is a very excellent point for Richard to raise there. It's ironic because usually I am called upon to talk about Buddhism in the transnational context rather than talk about it more narrowly from a sociological evolution within the U.S. So I'm actually much more comfortable on that sort of ground. Yeah, it's not as if after Suzuki Roshi died, and maybe some of the other initial missionaries died, that suddenly we stopped talking to Japan. Actually, our transportation and communication technologies have advanced a zillion fold since then, to use another Z word.

[43:53]

And nowadays, I, every single day, read Japanese websites, Buddhist ones. So that's something I wouldn't have been doing 50 years ago. And I go to Japan for extended periods of time every single year, something I might not have done. Now, I might have gone to Japan, perhaps, 50 years ago, but I probably wouldn't have popped back and forth the way I do. I might have gone and stuck for a much longer period. Actually, I was talking with Daigaku in the car last night about how we actually, in American Buddhist historiography, we've come to have this narrative we tell about San Francisco and about Rochester and about L.A., and they become sort of the dominant lineages, and we act like that's the whole story. But actually, there have been plenty of other people coming from Japan as missionary priests after those initial great founding figures, bringing their own particular lineages. And that's what I was trying to gesture with when I said that different lineages of Soto and all this sort of stuff have come in the way.

[44:57]

And that's added to the strength because these new people bring in new ideas from Japan, things that never made it across or things that didn't exist 50 years ago. Zen has evolved and Japan has evolved since then. And so they helped to bring continued fertility into America from Japan. That's absolutely a good point. At the same time, I have spent an awful lot of time talking to a very large number of people involved in Buddhism in America from many different sectors. And the people in this room right now, in some ways, tend to represent a certain elite within American Buddhism, particularly American Zen. Most people, though, are not residents and they have not necessarily had a 40 plus year practice and many people, particularly if they're younger, like in my generation, they really are, they never dropped out. They are doing this sort of, I'll bring in some Zen and I'll still be in the work world and I'll still have my family. I thought that was a very good characterization, actually, that Grace had before.

[45:58]

That it's kind of like having it all. And these people, I find, are very interested in elements of Japan. Like, Japanese pop culture is huge. And it's, at the universities, it's huge. I'm sure you've seen this at Duke. Oh my gosh, my undergraduate students, it's all about anime and dressing up like their favorite manga characters and everything. It's all I can do to keep them not to come to school in their costumes, okay? It's huge these days. It's gotten to the point where Keebler just has put out its own bastardized version of Pretz, okay? This is the popular Japanese stick pretzel thing. It's exactly Pretz except for what it's being marketed by an American thing. So, yeah, Japan has still influenced us even to a greater degree. But all of that said, I find that actually the average Zen person, and we have to be careful because I think many of us here today are not the average, above the average or different from the average or, you know, decide for yourself.

[46:58]

But the average person doesn't go to Japan, doesn't read Japanese, doesn't understand Japanese Buddhist institutions, and mainly they get Buddhism entirely in English, They don't have to know any words other than maybe Zen and Zazen and maybe Satori, this sort of stuff. And they get it on demand on the shelves at Barnes and Noble. They get it in their local area. They get it on the internet in chat groups and stuff. And even as Japan continues to influence people, I still think that the average person mainly has an almost entirely American experience of Buddhism. And so we can see counter-movements at the same time, that there's more Japanese elements floating around, and at the same time, because Zen has become robust, there's less need to look to Japan for many people in many places. I know that's a complicated sort of maybe ambiguous way to answer it, but I think both are true, that there's an awful lot of people I've found who

[48:01]

don't have any interaction with Japan directly and often have very, let's say, unique ideas about what Japan is about and what Japanese culture and Japanese history are about. I find that to be actually the norm, just in my own experiences as a researcher in the field. view, hopefully short, on this. Since I didn't spend time living in an American residential community, I've made it my business to go to Japan, sometimes a couple times a year, and I've also made it my business to take my students there. I think it's very important that people who have a deep commitment, this might not be the average, but people who have a deep commitment to practice actually experience the energetic flow of what it's like in a country, a Buddhist country, and especially in the lineage that we're following, rather than following a tradition which is our idea about what Suzuki Roshi meant, which becomes an imitation of what we think it was.

[49:12]

So I have made it my business to lead trips to Japan. I'm going to continue to do so. Hoitsu Suzuki Roshi and Chitose-san have hosted us. I've been on four such trips, two of which I've led, and the experience really teaches people something about practice in Japan. It's a very deep feeling, but even more so, they understand that the way Zen is being practiced in Japan, the Japanese have perfected. We will never come close to doing what it is that they do. So then the question is, what is it for us? How do we authentically inhabit this practice in the deepest possible way? So that's what I have to say about it. I'll say a few words, if I may. When I went to Japan to study Zen practice in the monasteries there, I did practice periods at Zuyoji, which is ranked as the number three Soto Zen training monastery in Japan. So it has certain and went there and practiced.

[50:17]

And after I was there for some weeks or a month or something, it was very interesting to learn what the Zen priests and monks and novices there were all interested in. And some of them insisted that I had to get a copy of the Autobiography of Rajneesh. So I went to Japan to study Zen, and the Zen monks there told me, Rajneesh, he's the one. So it points to how I think there's a tremendous amount of mutuality going on here, of information and ideas going back and forth. And even what we call Zen in Japan today is a product of many different influences and forces, historical and cultural and doctrinal in many different directions. Suzuki Roshi studied some Christianity and wrote about it in his thesis. And so my answer to Richard's question is I think there's a very important role, I would say a crucial role,

[51:32]

for people like Richard for this kind of question. Because it's not just a matter of interacting with current Soto Zen in Japan, but it's also a matter of understanding the historical development of Zen and Zen teachings and ideas, and how much of it is a constructed activity, how much it's changed and developed over the years. It's very easy to assume naively that there is a pristine, pure Zen, Zen teachings and experience. And my teacher has it. My Zen center has it. My lineage has it. People in Japan have it now. But to be able to step back and look at the wider historical development, I think, is crucial so that as we construct Buddhism here in the West, and every generation is going to have to construct it. That's what Suzuki Roshi was saying, I think, in the quote that I had on the board. as we construct our Zen here in the West, we can really have a reference point to really understand how we're changing it.

[52:36]

and how the assumptions, the ideas, the values that go into our particular construction. We look to Asia, to the earlier historical period of Zen and Buddhism, not necessarily because it's right, but rather because it really helps us to be honest about what we're doing here. And so I think people like Richard have a very important role to kind of highlight that for us. Every religion, the issue of survival became an issue. I've been told that in the field of religious study there's a cliché that every religion, in order to survive, has to change. But every religion that changes and admits it's doing it, dies. I've been very, this is very, very interesting. Thank you so much.

[53:37]

But one thing struck me that hasn't come up that I thought would be a natural part of several conversations is the Quakers. I see them as having a natural relationship with Zen Buddhists and I'm sure there's a You know, perhaps Jeff, you've studied them, and I think Gil, you might work with them, the Palo Alto Quaker Meeting. I'm not sure. But if you could sort of look at that, because they have a long history and have developed corporate meditation, consensus building, and also a very well-respected, I think, relationship to the military in our country. and the whole aspect of nonviolence. And that's something that I would like to see the Zen Buddhists be well-known and well-respected. So if you could comment on that, I'd appreciate it.

[54:38]

Well, there's really an endless number of groups that I could have brought up in not necessarily all three of those categories, but certainly in some of them. And I considered whether I wanted to talk about Quakers rather than Mormons, as a matter of fact. That was something I thought about. It's actually more complicated, because the Quakers themselves, part of their process of evolution over the last few hundred years has been to divide into two very different and rather antagonistic groups, the larger of which is the evangelical Quakers, who are very explicitly Christian, they're exclusivistic, they are evangelical with much of what that term carries nowadays for the wider Protestant culture. And that's actually the dominant model of Quakerism, and because of that particular split that they took, I just didn't want to get too much into history. I think probably what the questioner is referring to, though, is the smaller branch, the liberal Quakers, who are indeed very liberal and have incorporated, among other things, a lot of Zen these days.

[55:41]

I find a lot of people involved in that interested in talking about Zen. So because of that particular split, I just didn't want to get into it. Maybe Zen may go this way, too. It may be that there will be people who really decide that that connection to Japan is vital, and we get sort of Shumucho fundamentalists or something at some future point. I'm certainly not suggesting we're there now. and that that then has a breakaway group of re-counter-culturizing people who want to go in a different direction. Certainly we can expect that, although it may not be those particular things, there's going to be a lot of stuff we can't even imagine that will break into various forms of factionalism in the future of Zen in America. That always happens with successful groups. They spin off new sectarian movements and groups always develop more conservative and more liberal movements. That's, in a nutshell, the history of American religion right there.

[56:43]

I won't say much more than that. Maybe particularly about the relationship with the military and their experiences with Quakers. Maybe some of our other speakers might have something more on target for you. Thank you very much. I came to San Francisco Zen Center only having sat, just sitting. Only having sat and not read any of your books off the border shelves on Zen, and I am so happy I did. So my question is, that there are many forms in Zen, and people have been talking about tradition, and today I had a very wonderful experience in Zazen, and it really helped me to illuminate this question. I would have to say that in keeping the tradition of practicing these forms, we discover and give service to the vast, empty, unabiding nature of all actions.

[57:52]

from the organized exit of the Buddha hall after service to the Oriyoki. It is these forms which I feel very strongly are an act of deep reverence and a gift of taking refuge in the jewels and the Dharma. How can we possibly expect new practitioners like myself to truly understand these jewels and the practice if we assimilate to this point where you can get Jukai on the internet and there is no hand-to-hand warm transmission. I'm kind of reminded of what Dogen says, you know, that students who would like to study the way must not wish for easy practice. If you seek easy practice, you will for certain never reach the ground of truth or dig down to the place of treasure. Even teachers of old, who had great capacity said that practice is difficult. You should know that the Buddha way is vast and profound.

[58:57]

How can we experience that without the wonderful forms that have come from our mothership? Is that a question? Did you want to respond to that? Just to complicate things a little, I do want to point out that actually Zen began in Japan with virtual transmission. There's a school called the Daruma Shu, which was very early on, in some ways earlier than Dogen, that what happened was a guy in Japan read some Zen texts and had an experience and said to himself, I think I just had Satori." And he sent a guy with a letter describing his experience, he sent a disciple off to China to find a Zen master to certify him.

[60:00]

And by golly, they found a Zen master over there, Chan master I should say, and he read it and he said, oh, I think that Japanese guy got it. And so he gave him transmission. So then the disciple brings this transmission certificate back. And so Zen, as a sectarian form, actually begins with virtual transmission in Japan. Now, is Daruma Shu well represented in this room today? No, they died out, like many of the other groups I've talked about. Instead, actually, what managed to plant the roots was Dogen and Eisai bringing in living face-to-face Zen, okay? So I would just say that if we're bothered by such things, we can take comfort in the fact that they've tended to die out in the past, okay? If we're not bothered by such things, then we can note that people in America, where there's more than 300 million of us, live in a great diversity of different circumstances and situations, including people who live with no practical access to local teachers, no matter how liberally we define that idea of local.

[61:07]

And so perhaps in some situations, part of this successful diversification of Zen will entail everything from the people who want it getting the face-to-face transmission to the people who want it or must settle for it, getting the online transmission and everything in between. So you can take your choice as to which narrative you prefer. I'll leave that to you. Since I brought up the online Jukai, I'm going to now take the blame for bringing it up. But I think that there are 84,000 Dharma Gates, not 84,000 in one. And among those 84,000 Gates, There are various entry points to the way, visible and invisible. And for people, I'm not suggesting that those of you who go to Zen centers now just turn on your computer, but these may be Dharmagates for people. I'm not saying that they're not. They may be part of the 84,000 Dharmagates. I know that it was said that even touching an Okesa

[62:12]

brought you into the practice, whether this lifetime or the next. So when Wendy talked about the image, the Buddha images, having the resonance, the cosmic resonance of the actual bodhisattvas, I thought about the online juhkai and my negative judgment was suspended for now. I wonder if people want to move on to another subject. I would like to hear one of the people who applauded. This is the first time we've had that kind of applause from a statement from the audience. One of the people who applauded that statement explain to us why. Yes. This is only the second time in our questioning This is only the second time in our questioning that we've reached into another generation. And I think those of us who are in the crone years of our lives and the elder years of our lives know that the transmission has to be not only gender, but it has to be age-related.

[63:28]

So I think whenever we welcome someone into the practice, our tradition is to clap. with one hand or two. And since I have the mic, I would just like to add one thing. I'd like to go back to the gender issue. Having come to the Zen Center from a very ecumenical tradition, being raised as a preacher's kid, gone through the ordination of women and Protestant and the struggle still in Catholic traditions and Jewish traditions, I think it is time in the Zen Center that we acknowledge that women have been leaders as presidents, they have passed as abbots, and that it's time for men to tell us what has it been like for you in your life to have your teacher be a woman, to have the president of your Zen Centers be a woman. It is not a woman's issue to tell us. to tell you what it's like to be a woman.

[64:30]

I think it is time that we had a partnership and you all speaking up and saying what it has meant to you. Years ago, I wrote a poem that's in Tassajarwin saying, Zazen makes women stronger and men softer. And I think we need to have a real acknowledgment in writing and in affirmation of what it has been like to have this experience, which for this time in history in the United States is rather extraordinary. There are not too many religious organizations that have had the depth and number of years of women in leadership and women practicing side by side that the Zen Center has offered. Okay, we have just a few more minutes for, and Bhagat has the mic. I can wait. No waiting. Oh, Vicky, did you want to comment on this?

[65:32]

So what do you want me to say about it? If you look at our kechimiakos, our lineage documents, both Blanche and I would be the first woman on that document, and that is untrue. There's been many generations of women. Also, if you think about or reflect on a lot of the dialogue that we've had today, there's a shortage of conversation about monasticism and monastic traditions. So I thought it might be very beneficial to our discussion to have Zenkei Roshi talk about the transmission of Nyoho-e sewing from Japan. which I think reflects both of those lacks that I noticed. Well, it is true that Japanese women teachers brought this practice which has pervaded Zen Center and many other Zen centers as well, this practice of each person who receives precepts sows their own Buddha robe.

[67:10]

And the sewing is a devotional practice. And the teachers who brought it here were teachers of great devotion, which was what was so appealing to me about them. But quite frankly, I met the first one because being a roaring feminist, there was a woman Roshi coming. So I took my vacation to be at Zen Center while a woman Roshi was there. She was teaching sewing. So I learned it. But it's one of the great sort of karmic jokes of my life. I was a mechanic at Tassajara when I was down there. I was a chemist and a statistician in my professional life. I never did any traditional women's activity except have babies. In fact, I avoided it. And yet, these women came from a more traditional society where women often teach women's things. Many, many temple wives teach tea and flower arranging, for example, as a way to have an offering to make to the Dhamma.

[68:19]

But I find that men and women equally get really involved and interested and excited in making their Dharma robe. We take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha with each stitch. And it's just kind of great the way everybody gets engaged with this physical activity of making a dharma robe. And, you know, Dogen Sanji talked about the power of the kesa. And some very, very highly regarded Zen masters are kind of the source of the revival of this traditional hand sewing of robes. Sawaki Kotoroshi, Uchiyama Roshi, Hashimoto, Eiko Orochi. Anyhow, I don't know exactly what point you wanted me to make, but maybe that's enough.

[69:27]

Thank you. I'd like to thank you all for your excellent presentations. I work for the Japanese Soto Shu and over the last six and a half years have had the chance to visit maybe 70 or 80 Zen centers around North America. And one of my observations, and I'm sure it's not mine alone, is the grain of the Zen community throughout the United States. And it's a concern and it's a question, you know, how, if Zen is really going to be transmitted, how will it be transmitted to the next generation? That's what just brought up. And it leads me to Curtis's question, which he asked last night. I live at the San Francisco Zen Center. Curtis is a resident there. He is one of the younger people there. And the way that I heard his question was, listen, we are here, we are making the effort, we are contributing our talents, but is this practice real?

[70:35]

Is this genuine practice? Can you guys really verify that? Well, I'm paraphrasing that, and Curtis may not agree with that paraphrase. But my question is, and my real concern is, has the Dharma really been transmitted to this country? And I don't think it has. And that would lead into the conversation we're going to have this evening, or this afternoon, with Shogun-san and so on. But my question to you is, you know, the form is here. We're talking about the forms. And I'm worried about getting too far away from that central necessity of actually realizing the Dharma and then passing it on. And I don't know if you can answer that before we break or not. Thank you. We're here celebrating Suzuki Roshi's 50th anniversary of coming to this country, and I'm quite amazed and appreciative of 50 years of people practicing Zazen, 50 years of people doing the way-seeking.

[71:54]

When I looked at Suzuki Roshi's thesis, which was written when he was 26, before maybe he'd done a lot of practice, he says himself in the thesis, maybe he doesn't really, hasn't had the Zen experience yet. But when he was 26, as a young man, he puts the emphasis on the way-seeking mind as being what Zen is. That somehow that the seeking, maybe there is no Zen, but the seeking for what it is, the practicing looking for it, is what it's about. And I think that we have tremendous amount of sincerity and sincere practice in this country of people who are trying to find what it is. And as he said in the quote that I had on the PowerPoint, Zen is not found in experiences that we've had. It's like currency which can't be converted. And so that's a particular take on what Zen and what Buddhism is. At the same time, I think that I believe, I'm in the school that believes that there is a kind of core Zen

[73:00]

experience or at least a transformation that people undergo. And so how do we safeguard that that transformation is not really understood, that experience is really experienced by enough people that it can be passed on. Earlier today I called it Zazen mind or the mind of non-attachment. And I would like to suggest, and this is where I think there's a very strong religious element in Zen, and the religious element has to do with an article of faith, having to do about the value of an experience as being important or central. And so what is that experience and who's the custodians of it, who identifies what it is? We have teachers who very easily identify the experience as something that people have, and we have teachers who acknowledge very few people as having that experience. And so, how is it transmitted? How is it supported? What is it actually? And there is no authority outside of the individual practitioner and the teacher to answer these questions. And we can try to be as honest and articulate about how we come to our decisions, about what we're transmitting, what we're teaching, and what our experiences are.

[74:10]

And I put my hope in that way-seeking mind that tries to, in the best capacity we have, to be honest in what we're doing and name it. And if we do that, I hope that we will all come to satori. I have to agree with what Gil has described and say it my own way, which is, to answer your question in the affirmative, has it been transmitted, would be to brag. And to answer it in the negative would be to deny the reality of my life. But frankly, I feel the best people who could answer it are my own students. Are they experiencing authentic experience of Zen being transmitted to them, and is it changing their lives? And my own, having had many Zen experiences, I realized I was the same jackass after them as I was before. But that only through a lifetime of practice and a commitment to a lifetime of practice and putting my complete faith in it would it actually take root in a way that people could experience.

[75:14]

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