of his nature. But certainly he had seen Sokots would do the other, you know, where he had just drained his disciples. And so nobody could have been more meticulous than Sokaon was about not accepting anything from his disciples, and anything more than he felt they could pay, or that was absolutely necessary for his absolute needs. As I say, he used to pride himself on supporting himself by his literary work or wood carving, repairing work and so forth, up until the time I came and then I said that was ridiculous. And that the few dollars that it cost to give him food and that sort of thing in a month was nothing and it wasn't worth the energy that he put on these other things. And of course

[01:04]

by that time, he always kept up his writing until the war. He always wrote and got his little stipend every month from the newspaper up north. But after I came, I began to up afraid him, literally, about this matter of not sitting. And after we got into the big house on 65th Street, actually in the other place, we began to have a morning eight o'clock Zazen meeting, the more enthusiastic ones, the younger ones, who wanted to really come and learn to sit. And he was perfectly agreeable about it, but until they wanted it and under my urging and spurring them on, that was the beginning of it. And then when we got into the big house and we had a fine place for it, then of course that was one

[02:04]

of the main features that we started in with, was learning how to sit, yeah. So you're really responsible for getting that emphasis on sitting going? There's no question about that. I mean, I have to admit that because it's true. And it comes from the fact of the sitting and the hard sitting that I did at Nanzanji and the way I was trained there, and the great emphasis that was put upon it there, great emphasis. Now, Goto Roshi, I think, I don't think he put too much emphasis. Now, of course, I did it myself here. He didn't have to put emphasis with me. Maybe you know more talking to Donna and to Vanessa than I do. I do. I've never talked to Donna or Vanessa. I know that Walter was always very faithful

[03:06]

about sitting as much as possible, an hour or so even before he went to Sanzan, and often sometimes would sit for an hour or so in the afternoon. And he always tried to go to sessions and sit. So he, of himself, sat quite a bit. That might have been from his early experience in New York. Well, he was two years with me in New York, you see, before he came here. And then he was in the Dai Tokuji Sodo for some time. And it's quite true that they had this little room up at Daishuin, which I'm sure you saw. And we used to get up there, all of us, early in the morning. And we would sit until Roshi was ready for us. And we would sit for maybe half an hour afterwards, after Sanzan. And we had Sanzan in the prescribed manner, you know, sitting out on the roka. And when I never really had an O-Session period with Goto Roshi that I can remember, with Goto Roshi, but Walter certainly went up there,

[04:07]

particularly in the later years, he went up very much more. And I never had Goto Roshi speak to me about that sort of, about sitting. I didn't need any driving, to put it that way. And so I really never heard him express himself about it. But I don't, I still feel just as strongly as I felt after I came out of Nanzen-Ji, that it's the basic thing. Now, did you ever hear Goto Roshi express any general views about Soto training, and the function of that, and the value of it? No, I never did. I never did. I never did. You know, Zen people, Zen masters are very,

[05:08]

very odd. It's a very, very, in my experience with the three of them, been exactly the same. They, none of them want to talk about Zen. And the, with old Nan Shinken, I've told you this story before, he used to say to me when I first came, you've got so many questions. Well, of course I had questions. And so he said finally, please write them all down on a piece of paper, and come tomorrow afternoon at three o'clock and bring Johnny with you, and I'll answer them. And then when I gave it, he said we went, and I read the first one, and he said, well, when you can understand the answer, you won't ask the question. And that was the end of any questions and any answers I ever had out of him. Well, they must have views on these things, and they must talk about them, or they wouldn't

[06:09]

say, they wouldn't be criticizing other people's teaching lines, for example, you see. Well, now you take Sokyan, he used to say to me, oh, stop talking about Zen. Stop talking about Zen. That's my business. That's my job. I want something, I want to talk about something else. Well, they must, some of the priests or somebody must gossip among themselves if they are in a position, you know, to say, well, Sokatsu's lay line isn't as, or Fukutomi-san says that lay Roshis aren't really serious. They have views, no doubt. I expect they have. I guess they don't talk about their views to disciples. Well, they certainly haven't to me, because when I would be up at Daisho-in, how many I mean, I was up there constantly for years, and the conversation was 90% a personal affair,

[07:11]

people we knew or people, you know, some just odds and ends of gossip. And the other 5% would be on, now Roshi would say, now today I want to talk to you about Kano, be up there by myself. And then he would read something about Kano or tell me something about Kano. I have to admit, I was never very much interested in that kind of talk, because it was, having done the amount of study and reading I had, it was very primitive to me. I mean, very childish, it was the kind of thing that you might tell to a country man, country woman or something like that. Well, you said that Goto Roshi was something of an intellectual by nature before. Did he ever express any views about the value of book study or encourage anything? Yes, I think he was always willing to help me with any reading I was doing, like the

[08:15]

Hakuin material and the careful translation of a koan, and certainly he was still himself reading texts. And when, what's his name, big boy, tall boy, his disciple, Kosen, isn't he, Kosen? Ko, the present Jyusho Kodachiman. Yeah, Kosen. Ko. Is that what you call him, Ko now? Well, I don't know, that's what he's called in Sōdō, Kōsan. Kōsan. Kōsan spent nearly a year just doing nothing but reading after he came out of the Sōdō here. He had a little room up there. And Goto Roshi had quite a large library of various old books and things like that. And when he had been in Korea in his youth, when

[09:16]

he was a young priest, he had made a fine collection of old Korean books which he gave, some of them very valuable, to the Hanazono Daigaku, the Myōshinji school. I think he was always interested in books. And I think he read more than, certainly, I don't think Nan Shinken ever opened a book, other than his Hekigan and his Mumonkan. And when he was giving Mumonkan, Hekigan commentary, when I was there the second time, I wanted to get somebody to interpret it for me. I wanted to learn to read it or begin to read it myself. And I finally did find somebody, but he was furiously angry with me about it. I mean, really angry, because he didn't want me to do anything but Zazen and Kōan. Nothing.

[10:21]

Absolutely nothing. And any other study or any other thing, language study or that sort of thing was absolutely out with him. But it certainly was not out with Gotō Roshi, and it certainly was not out with Sokeian, because Sokeian was not, if not, he was not an intellectual in the sense that he... Gotō Roshi was something of an intellectual. He graduated... Something of a scholar. Scholar, yes. And he rather prided himself on that. He had edited the record of Inzan Roshi, the Inzan Roku, and had it published. And he had done a little, some literary work, and we got two or three little light books that he... Not light books, but small books that he had compiled. And he was not prolific, but he certainly had an interest in it. But

[11:31]

Sokeian was a writer, and he was much more the artist writer than the inspired writer than... Gotō Roshi was never an inspired man. So Sokeian was more of a creative type. Absolutely. Gotō Roshi is more of the scholarly type. That's right. Sokeian was just a living flame, creative flame. There was no question about that in his ability in, whatchamacallit, in carving and in writing and painting and in this. What was Gotō Roshi's work in Korea? After he left Sokatsu and went back to Miyoshinji, he was sent by Miyoshinji to Korea to open a Betsuin, Miyoshinji Sensō, to open a little...

[12:36]

Branch temple. Branch temple. And when he got there, he found that they'd taken two rooms in the house. That's all it was. When he left, he had built a great big magnificent temple. He was there a long time, I don't know, 17 years or something like that. And from being a very shy and rather inarticulate man, he trained himself to be an excellent preacher. And he was considered the very best preacher in the Miyoshinji line. Preaching was his business. And the teaching, I don't think, I think that Gotō Roshi was his first real Sanzen student. He may have had some over in Korea in the last few days, last few years, but that he's told me many times. And he, of course, he had this Enjoji, but when that man began, it must be after

[13:42]

Gotō Roshi. But he may have had a few, but of course he never was in the Sōdō. When he came back from Korea, he went to his old teacher's temple at Ogaki and rebuilt it in Gifu, two or three temples he had there, and rebuilt them. And his ability was, as I say, he was apparently a very, very extraordinary preacher. So that most of that time in Korea, he wasn't really training disciples? Oh, no. No, he was, he was working from scratch as a missionary with the Japanese who had no religious, nobody to bury their dead. That's where he began was, he said that it began, he didn't know what to do. He once told me how to begin. He had these two rooms

[14:45]

and what should he say to people? And when should he say it? And it began when either somebody died, and he had to say something at the little ceremony after the funeral, or there was a little memorial service, and he took that occasion. That's the kind of thing that has, I think, got to be purged out of Zen, I mean, in its present extravagant way. I think that a certain amount of ceremony with the proper attitude of mind and inculcating a proper attitude of mind is reasonable and correct, but I don't think that any of us in America can subscribe to the extent even that we have it here.

[15:50]

Yeah, well, it's not so unreasonable here. Actually, many mornings at the Sojo, the whole morning Okyo is over in 35 minutes. Well, isn't that about correct, 35 minutes for about correct? That much feels good. Yeah, oh, I think that, well, if you're going to recite Okyo yourself, there isn't anything better in the world to wake you up in the morning and to, do they walk around here at, or do you sit for Okyo in the early morning? Sit. You sit. Not sit either, cross-legged. Cross-legged sitting. Because, well, I don't know whether it was the early morning one, during low session time, the four o'clock in the morning one, or not, that we used to walk, but we had, I think we did, I think we used to walk around the way the priests walk around here. They do, while chanting. While chanting. No, I've never seen them do that. And when, in the rohatsu time, when we get sleepy about one o'clock, Old Nan Shinken

[16:57]

would come and take everybody out, lead everybody out of the zendo into the hondo and have them walk for an hour, and chanting, and he would lead the procession. I don't think I saw him do it other than at rohatsu time, but at that time he got everybody pepped up and their blood circulating, both from the chanting and from the walking, both, but he'd lead the whole line into the hondo, and then we'd start this snake walking, you know, back and forth and back and forth that way. That's pretty fun. Oh, I think it's, I think it's wonderful. I always enjoyed that tremendously, tremendously, because I'm very fond of sutra chanting. I think when you get your breathing adjusted and you begin to chant a long series of phrases on your exhaled breath, which is exactly what you're doing when you do zazen anyway, you do it, you do this chanting exactly the same

[18:01]

rhythm, and you can do it without any conscious thought of what you're doing. It's just one of the best forms of meditation I know. And, oh, it's wonderful. So I would never, I would be very sorry to see chanting as a general thing removed from any Western Zen practice. And I'm, I don't think that all the, for instance, in the mornings over here, we sometimes chant namakarotano for, I don't chant it because I never learned it. It wouldn't do me any good to chant it because, or to learn it, because they chant it so fast, you know, blah, [...] blah. And I couldn't ever do it. I don't know what they're saying. I can't even chant the Hanya the way they chant the Hanya. Here in that morning service, they chant, the first time

[19:05]

they chant namakarotano, they chant it slowly. And after that, sometimes there'll be seven or eight times in the service that they will chant the same thing. Well, of course, that's in honor of various patriarchs and various Kanchos and so forth of Daito-koshi, because that service that I go to on the 22nd of the month is the service on the death day, the anniversary of the death day of Daito-kokoshi. And always, he gets breakfast and he gets dinner, and this is in between the chanting and the bowing and all goes on in between this thing. And then on certain days, it's much longer and there are many, many more people. They read the echoes, you know, and many more people have these sutras chanted in their honor. So sometimes it will go on for a long time and you'll sing the chant

[20:06]

namakarotano for seven or eight times in one morning. Normal time number is about four times. But other times, it varies. I have no idea why it varies, except that they read all these echoes and they start all over again. And of course, in America, that sort of thing would never be necessary. And I'm not certain that many of the services, in a sense, that are enjoyed over here and are completely part of the tradition should be transplanted. I think there would have to be a great deal of pruning and trimming and that sort of thing. But a certain amount of sutra chanting, and that sutra chanting, in my belief, in this bastard Sanskrit Chinese that they use, which they don't understand, of course, what it

[21:11]

means, is the fact that you don't understand it, I think has great value. You can't understand. I mean, you can't stop and think what I'm saying now. You should know what it is and you should study it before you ever begin to chant it. But once you're chanting it, it should come out of you, just like your breath comes out of you, you know, without any thought in it at all, because the meditative state should be going on in your stomach all the time, that this sound is coming out of your mouth. And that, I think, has distinct value, very, very important value. And I don't think any English chanting could do it, because the mind would be instantly caught from time to time with words that would mean something, you know. And for them, of course, this doesn't mean anything, because they don't know it any better than we do. It's such, really, what, bastard language, whatever it is.

[22:13]

Well, apparently that has a quite well-worked-out psychological theory behind it in Sanskrit, about the theory of sounds and the theory of magical sounds and mantra and repetition and so forth. There's no question that it's a very, very interesting and very important science, which we know practically nothing about, practically nothing. And that whatever value we get as individuals from the practice of sutra chanting ourselves is due to this sound, this mantric value which it has, and the effect upon the mind of these sounds. That's why I would be, and have always been, against there being the chanting of English, an English version of it, because I don't think that it would do the same thing. Of course, you can say,

[23:19]

well, that all these sutras that are chanted are translated from the Sanskrit into Chinese, and therefore the true mantric value which they may have had in the Sanskrit has not been correctly transformed or transmuted when it was changed into Chinese. But so much of that Chinese is nothing but sound translation anyway. Well, the whole... Transposition. The whole Namukaratana is just straight kind of sound transposition. It's just Chinese ways of pronouncing Sanskrit. Pronouncing Sanskrit. So you could argue that if we were to start chanting the Namukaratana in English, sooner or later it would take on certain features of English pronunciation. Yes. Certain unconscious features of English pronunciation. Except that we would have to... well, we would want to translate. The Chinese didn't translate. Well, you see, what I'm saying is you wouldn't translate it. You'd do the same thing the Chinese did, which is just, you know, hear it with your ears and repeat it as your ears

[24:22]

hear it, and your ear will put a certain English tone to some of the vowels and consonants eventually. But you've done no more than the Chinese did, or the Tibetans, who pronounce it differently from the Sanskrit. You know, trying to stay in the same thing anyway. So in essence, it's historically valid. Well, you would have to put all the Chinese sounds in Roman letters, and then in English consonant and vowel combinations. Well, it comes out that way anyway, when you start Romanizing it and then trying to chant it. You're not chanting it quite the same way. Well, but that's one of the things that I think should be kept. And I think a certain amount of bowing should be kept, because I think that the respect for that bowing gradually

[25:25]

inculcates, just the act itself, that again, that is the psychological effect of that mudra as it is. It is, it's exactly the same thing, you know? Yeah, it's a basic, almost biological mudra of exposing yourself, of making yourself vulnerable. You mean bowing? Yeah. How do you mean that? That's what its historical function is. I mean, bowing apparently originates in the man making fealty to a feudal lord, to a chief, actually originally to a chief, and he makes his signal of acceptance by putting his head down, where his head can be chopped off, by putting himself in a position where he can't defend himself. Well. And there's a biological base for this. It's very interesting. Monkeys do it. I read an

[26:28]

article on the behavior of monkeys, group behavior of monkeys, and there's always a chief monkey, and every once in a while some of the other monkeys will challenge his authority in some way, and he'll grab them and he'll either scare them by grimacing and growling at them, or actually knocking them around a little bit, and to calm him down and to get him to stop beating up on them, they get down into a certain posture, which signifies, well, like a cat turning over on its back, or a dog turning over on its back, saying, you can kill me. I give up. And I think that the bow is that kind of thing. It's putting yourself where you can't defend yourself, and a position of total trusting acceptance, and the bow has exactly that psychological function, because you feel very vulnerable when you bow. That's very interesting. I hadn't thought about it from a biological standpoint, but I think that so many of these things that we do or are done have a significance like

[27:35]

that, or have a source of that kind. Well, the deep Chinese bow is actually an extension of the head, you know, putting yourself in a position to be beheaded. That's true. And that's the way they understood it, apparently, originally. That's very interesting. There's a lot of primitive Chinese kind of symbols of acceptance of authority. Well, and how do you take this, putting the palms together, bowing that way, what you call a gashou. Gashou. Well, you're not holding a weapon. No, Su Keong used to explain it. Perhaps it's in some of his lectures. It's a union of man, and I don't want to say what he said, because I don't remember well enough. But he gave it a, shall I say, religious or metaphysical significance.

[28:39]

Well, the primitive significance, for example, like shaking hands is supposed to be the primitive sign of I'm holding no weapon. And anything like that, like putting hands together, then you're not in a position to you don't have anything concealed, you don't have anything, you don't have any hands behind your back and so forth. Well, I, and I think of it in this bowing, particularly this gashou, in, as a later development, the expression of respect toward, for instance, when you come into the zendo to this hall in which is more or less, shall we say, dedicated, using a big word, to this particular exercise. And also when I bow at the little shrine every morning, bowing to the Buddha, and the expression

[29:42]

of respect and reverence to, not the Buddha image, of course, up there, but to that which is the source of everything, including myself, and actually is my being, as it were. I, well, I don't think I should tell you this tonight, put it on this tape, because this is something fairly recent, something that's come up in the last few days in one of the Rinzai notes. Yeah. Oh, God. Well, let's see. I wonder if, to finish what we were talking about last time, that that general line of discussion was first about Soren Shaku and then about Sokatsu Roshi and then about Goto

[30:43]

Roshi, if you would like to say a little bit about Soke-yan as a teacher and his views on traditional teaching methods. Well, I would have to think a little bit. Well, I would have to think a little bit about his, exactly how to say it. I think if I begin with your first remark and speak about it, your last remark and speak about it first, I should say that Soke-yan was very traditional in his viewpoint, very traditional. Certainly, that he had gotten from Sokatsu, there's no question about that. As I've said earlier, the matter of Zazen, he was not strong at all because, as I've

[31:48]

said earlier, what his reasons for that were. But when it comes to the actual Sanzen matter, he was convinced that that was the heart of Rinzai Zen and it should be carried on in the old way, I mean, as much as possible in America as he could. And he was a most remarkable teacher in Roshi and Sanzen. I think I've said, at least you personally, if I haven't said it over this tape, that he was the powerful teacher. He was what one would dream of having as a teacher in Sanzen. He was utterly transported out of himself when he sat in the Roshi's chair.

[32:54]

And you had the feeling before him that you were talking, that you were, this was not a man, this was an absolute principle that you were up against. I mean, it never changed with me in the years that I knew him and worked with him and how ever intimately, in a sense, I might have known him and did come to know him. In Sanzen, I never had any different feeling at all. It was up against, I was face to face with an absolute state. And I never saw it any different in any of his Sanzens. He was, at least with me, he was always very strict.

[33:55]

Well, of course, I don't think anybody ever went into Soke-On, perhaps they don't do any other Roshi, without their knees shaking to death and absolutely paralyzed with fright in front of it until you get there. And his intuition of what was going on in your mind and how to force you to crystallize for yourself what it was that you were coming toward. Well, it's hard to speak about it, but as I say, I think from my standpoint, he was the ideal Roshi. Perhaps, of course, with Nan Shinken, I had always to have an interpreter present, and

[35:15]

it was only on rare occasions when he and I were alone at Sanzen. And on those occasions, he usually spoke to me as a teacher to a disciple. So I'm sure that I am not, I have no right to speak about him really as a Roshi, and the way he must have affected his Japanese students, you know, who, I mean, his developed ones who could really... You had some Japanese students in New York? Well, no, I say, no, I'm talking about Nan Shinken. Oh, Nan Shinken. Nan Shinken. The way his Japanese students could face him and what they met in him. Goto Roshi was always the more, always something of the intellectual, and he had many, I should

[36:30]

say, moods in Sanzen, some of them very beautiful, and his reaction to the handling of a koan that if there was a certain beauty in it, this would reflect in him in some way. If there were other qualities that were in the koan, he would, in a certain way, reflect. I never saw that quality in Soke-yan. Soke-yan was always this absolute thing, this absolute thing. You said, you just mentioned it a moment ago, that Soke-yan made some special allowances in the matter of Zazen, because he felt that American people wouldn't bring themselves to do Zazen in the traditional way. Did he, in other ways, make any significant adjustments in his teaching methods to Westerners,

[37:32]

do you think? Or any, you know, transpositions or developments in the Western mind and thought, the Western thought and mind? No, I don't think so. He gave his Teisho, of course, he gave Teisho twice a week, and he used, he gave it in certainly the old traditional form, reading, translating in certain portions. We'll say he began with Rinzai Roku, he did Rinzai Roku, he did Engaku-kyo, what other big ones, he did Gotoshikan, which is a Kegon text. But he did it in the old-fashioned way. He began his Teisho always with chanting, which he himself did. He didn't expect the audience, because he had rather an audience.

[38:39]

His students were few, and maybe six or seven students would come to a lecture, which he gave Wednesdays and Saturday nights, but there were likely to be 20 to 30 other people in the audience. So he didn't expect his students to chant sutras, he didn't ask the audience to chant. He himself always performed a small ceremony in front of the Buddha and did a, and chanted. And then, let me see now, let me think, how did that go? And he would always, he had Sanzen first always. He would ask people to, his students to come early, and he would have them, and there would

[39:46]

be about a half an hour before he began Sanzen, and he would be in the shrine room, and when he was ready for Sanzen, he'd ring his little bell, and then the students would go in order for their Sanzen, and when that was finished, then he would perform this, he'd open the doors of his Sanzen room, and he would perform his service in front of the altar, and then he would come take his seat and give his lecture, which was all, most of the time based upon some one of the texts. When he got to the, when he got over into the 65th street, he gave Sanzen up on the, in his own study, on the third, on the second floor, and he did the same thing. He had, the students came early, and sat quietly for about a half an hour, and then he would

[40:50]

ring the Sanzen bell, and they'd go up, and then it would be after that, after their Sanzen was completed, he would come down and do the bowing, and he used to have all of us, of the students, and anybody else who wanted to, when he finished his bowing and his chanting, in front of the altar, and burning incense, he would take his seat, and then his oldest student would go and bow, Gassho, and burn incense, and the next oldest, and the next oldest, and the next oldest, and at the end of the line of students who had bowed and burned incense, would come any of the audience who wished to do the same thing, and when that was finished, then he would sit down, and he would begin his Teisho. That was the way it, that was the general routine.

[41:51]

What about in Sanzen itself? Was he making any kind of creative adjustments to Western music? Well, he was giving koans in English. He was giving koans in English, and one problem that his students had with his English translations was that he would sometimes vary the English translation of the same koan, so that if you went one week, he would give you the koan, and then the next week he would change the English translation a little bit. That was sometimes confusing. As for the physical situation in Sanzen, he had one of these, he had, he owned two of these chairs, such as Roshi sit on.

[42:53]

The Teisho pictures? Mm-hmm. Those Hondo chairs that they... Yeah, with the rounded back, and he had two of those, and he sat in one, and the students sat in the other, and facing him, so that he did not get down on the cushion, and the student did not get down either. The student bowed outside the Sanzen door and rang the bell, and entered and closed the door and bowed, and then stood before him and bowed the third time, and then back sat down in the seat facing him, two chairs face to face. And he always carried a nyoi in his hand, and to this, over this side, he had his little bell. And that was the physical situation.

[43:56]

Mm-hmm. That was the adjustment that he made. Did he modernize his translations in other ways at all? Like, for example, sometimes the sailing sailboat koans changed to the train or the cars? No, he never modernized them. It was whatever he did was either to...perhaps he thought he improved it a little bit or something like that. But he stuck very, very, very closely to...as closely as he could to the English...I mean to the traditional koan itself. I never knew him to give any...and I took a good many koans from him. I never knew him to give any adaptation. He told me about the adaptation. It was Soyen himself who made the adaptation of the train one, I mean, the sailing boat

[44:56]

to the train. And with almost tragic results, you know, the man went and laid down on the tracks, one of his Sanzen students, a layman, some boy, to stop the train. And they'd stopped the train without running over him, but it was a very close shave. He was very literal about it. But he did not, for a long time, ask for jakugo. Even koans that should have had jakugo, he did not attempt to. And then he did not attempt to use Zenrin Kushu, because none of it was translated. And when he asked for jakugo, of his older students or more experienced ones, he would

[46:00]

ask for something from English poetry, or he often suggested Alice in Wonderland. He was very fond of that, and he felt that there were a number of lines in that that could be used as jakugo. Did he have any particular favorites in English poetry that he would suggest? Any authors or periods? No. He suggested nursery rhymes, too. Nursery rhymes and Alice in Wonderland or the others were what they had to find themselves, but those two sources, nursery rhymes and Alice in Wonderland, were things that he felt had suitable lines in them. But I never knew him to use anything from Zenrin Kushu or to ask it, because we had no

[47:05]

copies of it. Nobody knew anything about it over there. But I think this is interesting about Soke-yan and Soke-yan's teaching. We used to find that continuously that he came always back in almost every, not every lecture, but so many lectures. He would repeat himself, and what he was repeating himself on was the way of explaining or trying to make people understand what the dharmakaya or absolute state of the experience of that was like. And he used to say, when I had questioned him about it and said, when you start out

[48:09]

with a lecture, we'll say on a technical term, which has nothing to do with it, because he did give a series of lectures on technical terms, just as he gave a series of lectures on some 40-odd Agamas, which he felt could be only, in which the Buddha's teaching could only be correctly interpreted through Zen teaching. At least, shall I say, the teaching in the Agama itself, or the Nikaya, was exactly what was being taught in Zen. The teaching was analogous. But he was constantly coming back to describing, explaining, trying to make people feel what the dharmakaya state was, and asking him about it, as I say, which I did two or three times,

[49:12]

I would say, Soke-yan, you start out tonight, you started out tonight with a technical term, and you were explaining that, you were going along beautifully, and then before you knew it, you were back in the dharmakaya again. And this had, tonight's lecture, theoretically, had nothing to do with dharmakaya. How is it that you're always getting back to the dharmakaya? And he said, Well, he said, You know, there's one thing which the West knows nothing about as yet, and that is the dharmakaya, that there is an absolute state which they can experience and which must be experienced. And I don't expect in my teaching life to ever do any more than to inculcate some people in America with either the feeling or the understanding or the realization of this dharmakaya state. That is the basis, he said, for our Zen study.

[50:16]

And until they come to realize that, or to first of all to know about it, and then to understand it, and then to realize it, they cannot go on into real Zen study. That's the basis. And because nobody knows about dharmakaya state in the West, it's absolutely an unknown realm. Therefore, I must come back. I must come back. I must come back and teach it to them, talk to them about it. And as a matter of fact, he would become so lyric. His spoken, or the copied down notes don't show it very clearly, because most of us, when he would really come to work himself up to the high point of this statement on the dharmakaya, would be himself so completely transported that everybody there thought they

[51:24]

were experiencing the dharmakaya state with him, and you couldn't possibly. Everybody's pencil stopped. That was a continuous phenomenon. I mean, it happened constantly. And that is the kind of power he had. I mean, he could take an audience, and his English was not awfully good, you know. But as a poet and a writer, he had a capacity for a happy choice of words. And when he would get really going on the dharmakaya, he would become literally a lyric poet, and he himself would just, well, he would just actualize that state, and everybody in the whole audience would be caught in it. And when it was over, everybody, what they had thought, I mean, they felt that they had

[52:33]

been, that this, there was somehow an extension from him of this state that he was experiencing or lived in all the time anyway. It was really remarkable, really remarkable. I've never seen anybody else do anything like that. I suppose like a great theatrical performance sometimes, but this was quite different. And of course in Sanzen also, when he was really completely engaged in Sanzen, it was as if there was no man there at all. The room was just completely filled. It was very interesting. He was very remarkable in that aspect of things. His scholarship was not too good.

[53:35]

There were many deficiencies from the standpoint of accuracy and pure scholarship and his ability to read Chinese and that, but I think there is nobody who ever listened to him through one lecture ever doubted that he was not a thoroughly enlightened man. That was so clear that you couldn't forget it ever once you had heard him and you had seen him as he used to sit there because he would become so beautiful that it was almost hard to look at him. Of course I have great personal affection for him, but it had nothing to do with that and I'm not alone by any manner of means in speaking about it because if you wanted

[54:42]

to see a person transformed, a physical body transformed and really glowing with what he was experiencing, where he was living, that was so beyond an imitation. It was remarkable, just remarkable. Of course not every time because some days he'd be very tired or the material in his lecture would be poor and it was too scholarly a section or a passage for him. He wasn't equal to it from a scholar's standpoint, but let him once get going on the Dharmakaya and anything related to experience, then experience, and he was really something out of this world and I really mean something out of this world.

[55:42]

I've never seen anything like it. It's great. I'll never forget the effect he made on our family lawyer the first time we ever met him and he came down the stairs in that house on 65th Street and he'd been up in his room and he came down to meet Mr. Winston and he was a big man, you know, he was 5 foot 10 which is big for a Japanese and when he was well he weighed about 185 pounds. And a man of, you saw him, he was power. That was, he really was, he was power and personified. And Mr. Winston said, well, he said, that's a man.

[56:45]

He said, that's a man. That's a man. He looked so little beside him. I had just exactly that feeling of me reading Cat's Yawn a few weeks back. Oh, really? And the thing that struck me was, oh yeah, man, he's a man. The choice of words and the way he gets things. Yes. A real man. Yes, he was a man. A real man. And he didn't want to be anything but a man. And I, the last informal talk he ever gave, and I think it's the last talk that he ever gave before he was, on the 15th of June before he was taken by the government, was what he had gotten out of Zen, what Zen had meant to him. And he said, there is only one thing. He said, I got nothing. But there's only one thing I want, and the only one thing that matters,

[57:52]

and that is to be a human being. It's a very lovely lecture. I've got about 15 or 16 of those that really someday should be edited and published. They have their creaky points, and I'm always shy about turning them out where more or less, I mean, scholars could find the mistaken dates and things like that and disparage him for it. Because he just would talk about historical things off the top of his head. Yes, oh, very often, very often. He didn't bother about that, because he was, first of all, he was an artist and a poet, and those things were all right, but he didn't have time for too much. What was more important for him was the exact word that he needed to use to get over what he wanted to say. That was much more important than whether the man's dates were right or that sort of thing.

[58:53]

And that's what he would spend time with on that word, finding that word that he was going to use. That brings me to another question, which I think is kind of important, especially from the standpoint of the experience we've had with later Roshes going to America, and that is, how accurate and how deep do you think Sofian's insight into the Western mind, the American personality was, finally, and into that society and into the kind of people that society produces? Did he come to understand America, do you think? Or to what degree? Well, he was hardly Japanese at all. He had nothing to do, particularly the last ten and, wait a minute, I think, certainly the last ten years of his life, from the time before I knew him,

[59:55]

he had little or nothing, he had nothing to do with the Japanese community whatsoever. And he didn't like Japanese people. He didn't like Japanese ways. He loved America. He had, of course, tramped the West, and that's what he loved. He loved the freedom of Oregon, Washington, the Columbia River Valley. He tramped all that country. And he tramped Utah, and perhaps I'll tell you more, give you a little story of his life next time, and you will see. And he used to say, when I would come back to Japan, I would feel as if I was lifting the ceiling of the house with my shoulders over my head, and my elbows were sticking out through the shoji. And he was a very completely free man.

[60:55]

He had no, he insisted upon no special decorum or patterns of politeness or that sort of thing in the Japanese sense at all. Not at all. But he was very quick-tempered. He could become angry very quickly. And I remember his telling once that Old Man Goddard came to see him. Was it Old Man Goddard? Yes. For the first time, I guess, Old Man Goddard came to see him. And that was early in his having his own place on 71st Street in New York, 70th Street, on the west of Central Park. He had a great big living room, a general room, and he had a shrine room and a bathroom and a kitchen. And he used to do the osoji for it, the cleaning for it.

[61:59]

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