I think you... I'm sure all of you don't, but some of you know the story of when Suzuki Roshi and I first came to Tassajara and saw the place, don't you? Some of you? Anyway, I won't tell the whole story, but briefly we came down. I came and camped in this area and I saw this land which looked private, you know, in the middle of the national forest. So I inquired about it. I couldn't believe it, why it was here, you know. And this place looked like some place that businessmen brought their girlfriends or secretaries or something. Some isolated, some strange feeling. So I asked around and happened to mention a bookstore

[01:03]

in the city, and he said, oh, I used to own it. A man who owns a bookstore, which is some lucky chance. And he gave me the name of Bob Beck, and then I lost the piece of paper. And one year later I went and asked him again, because it had, of all the land I'd ever looked at for Suzuki Roshi, he always wanted a place in the country somewhere. So I always was half looking everywhere I went. This was the best, you know. So I went to the bookstore again, Fred Roscoe Discovery Bookshop in North Beach, and asked Fred for the name again. He gave me the name. And I came down. I called up Bob, and Bob said, Zen, everybody says they're Zen. It's a fly-by-night operation. I tried to reassure him that we, at least we're around

[02:19]

for a few nights. And I sent him a wind bell and things like that. So he agreed to see us. So I brought Suzuki Roshi down, and we went around. First, we were going to get only one acre or so over the Hogsback, because that's all Bob would sell. And the whole story of why it went from this to the horse pasture and then back to here, it's quite a long story. And I don't want to tell the whole story, you know. Anyway, we looked around, and we thought only one acre or two acres. And of course, we only had $1,000 someone had given us. We went back up the road, and Suzuki Roshi's always very cool, you know. He's awful, wonderful feeling from him, and he's happy, you know. But he doesn't get enthusiastic about this thing or that thing. Just everything is rather good for him. But we started up the road and kept saying, stop the car. So I'd stop.

[03:23]

He'd get out. He seemed about 10 feet tall, but of course, somebody took the pictures. And there is this little tiny man, me, you know. But at that time, he seemed enormous. He'd jump around in the car. So I'd say, come on, get back in the car. Instead, he'd trot along beside the car while I was driving. He wouldn't get back in. So finally, I'd get him back in the car, and we'd drive around the next bend. Stop! And he'd get out. So then I would drive the car way up, and then I'd walk with him, and then we'd walk to the car. Anyway, I'd never seen him so enthusiastic about anything, you know. At least, this is maybe only one or two times. So anyway, we decided to try.

[04:28]

At first, when we first started, we were sitting over on the deck next door, next to the guest dining room. And then we fixed up this room and covered it with a huge fireplace underneath here, if you don't know. It's covered up, comes out to about here. And there used to be easy chairs around it. And the bar, back there where the drum is, was a bar. And there were pool tables. So we covered up the bar, I mean the fireplace here. And we had the first Tangario. And there were about, I don't remember, 90 students, 80 students. I figured quite a few wouldn't make it, so we had

[05:36]

10 or 20 more than the Zenda would hold. Angie, you were here that first Tangario, right? After the first month. I think Angie's the only person here that was here right near the beginning. And anyway, there are quite a lot of people here who are used to either city life or used to their own version of country life. And both to city life and country life, five days of, three days at that time, the Tangario seemed completely incompatible. And we had about 20 dropouts within the first few hours. And there was a big party going on over in cabin number, anyway, on the

[06:40]

right side, the second cabin down, smoking grass and talking about those crazy people in Tangario. And I'd go visit them every now and then. Actually, I ran into two or three of them in Tyson's group several years later when I was there. Anyway, they just didn't, you know, they were pretty good. I liked them, but they just didn't have any idea. And Suzuki-Oshi wouldn't tell us anything, you see. We knew nothing about what Tangario was. Now you know what Tangario is, right? He just said, there will be Tangario. We'd say, what is it? So even I didn't know, you know. And I was scheduling Tangario and I didn't know what I was scheduling, right? So we, everybody walked, and people were terribly afraid, actually.

[07:41]

Everybody was really scared. And they didn't have any idea what it was going to be. We, you know, it could have been anything. It turned out to be about as bad as anyone could imagine. Because we all took it literally that you don't sit, that you don't move all day, no kenyan. So two people, I knew I couldn't do it. It took me about two or three years just to get my knees to touch. So I had to schedule myself. So I moved every couple hours. Something like that. But Dan Welch, who'd been sitting in Japan before, and I think Bob Gove, yeah, Bob Gove, sat for three days without moving. And they'd move for meals, they'd sort of turn around for meals.

[08:43]

Dan said it was the hardest thing he ever did. Anyway, we didn't know, so we did it. Anyway, the problem then was how to survive Tassajara. That's all anybody talked about. How do we survive this place? It was terrible. And every time we tried something new, like we did the oriokes, you know, a little bit, we lost 10 or 20 students as soon as we demonstrated the orioke. Every time we introduced something, we'd lose a bunch of students. And I was the first Shuso, and my job was, I was always going to people's rooms who were crying, and who just couldn't, you know. And as I said here, last time I talked, I think, that there's still people from that time who have nightmares about me. I find out. Anyway, at that time, it was, no one thought they could survive it, and Tsukiyoshi seemed to

[09:58]

be making it more difficult each month. Of course, it still was, nothing like now, which isn't difficult or easy, just the way it is. Anyway, nowadays, what I hear, you know, I mean, in the city, what people always talk about to me is, how can I practice here? How can I practice in the city? And now I come down to Tassajara, and no one talks to me about how can I survive Tassajara. Everyone talks about, how can I practice in the city? Both people in the city and in Tassajara now seem to have the same problem. And sometimes I've thought that it was a mistake to get Tassajara, because, actually, it's not the

[11:10]

kind of place, for instance, in Japan they would put a Buddhist temple. They would put a shrine here, maybe, a kind of nature worship place, to recognize the spirits of the place, but they'd put the monastery up in the horse pasture or out in the middle of Carmel Valley, more likely, so that the beauty of it was something that the monks living there created, and wasn't something that nature gave them, because you get too attached to a place like this. I can remember when we first started, we told the person who was our caretaker here, that we'd been coming down quite a bit, but we hadn't had anybody. Ed Brown, I guess, was cooking. And one night we were all down here, this is, there's no bearing on anything, but one night we

[12:17]

were all down here, and we're in the fireplace room, and Suzuki Roshi and myself, and maybe two other people, and the road was just impassable, it was snowy, and we were wondering how we were going to get out. And a man came in, suddenly came down the road, and he'd been giving his girlfriend, who had one foot, driving lessons, on this road. Anyway, we sent them down to a cabin, and then Roshi and I sort of rubbed our eyes, we began to expect miracles, you know, we wondered if it was really true that we'd seen these people. But anyway, there was one person here we had as caretaker at that time,

[13:19]

who had been practicing with us for some time, not so long, and one thing we decided was that when anybody came in, there should be one day, or a certain length of time of Tongariyo when you entered. So we'd drive in, and this person would come up and grab Suzuki Roshi and myself, and we'd say, what? He'd lead us to this room that he'd set up for Tongariyo, and he'd sit us down, and Roshi and I'd sit there. And then we'd come in for an afternoon or something, and had to leave. And we tried to explain to him that, you know, that wasn't exactly the way we wanted the rule applied. And all he could say was, but you don't understand Tassajara and the stars, and the real quietness here. Actually, that's true, you know.

[14:21]

If you don't live here a lot, that quietness which is here, which is your own quietness, you know, you begin to have some special feeling of possession of being at Tassajara. But you have to be able to, of course. Tassajara can't possess you, you have to possess Tassajara. You have to possess your own freedom. We start out practice with some kind of dependence. Actually, we give up. You start practice when you're willing to give up your independence, and try to sit and have the freedom to not move. Generally, the only freedom we have is the freedom to move. So we have to give ourselves the freedom to not move, and then the freedom to move.

[15:30]

And for us, I think, Americans, it's particularly hard to practice with a group. Roshi always used to tell me, you know, how do you manage to stay here? It's so difficult to practice with a group. Of course, it was his way of getting me to stay, because I was always on the verge of leaving. So anyway, we start out with that kind of dependence, and then we come to Tassajara, and we get some kind of independence that we're actually afraid we're going to lose in the city, I think. I mean, to be afraid of the city is to be afraid of your own lack of independence. And also, Buddhism, of course, is a religion. It's not just a way, you know. Taoist, maybe a too simple explanation, description of the Taoist way, perhaps, but

[16:38]

Taoist emphasis is to find a beautiful place, you know, and go live in it and become beautiful. And Buddhist way is to make yourself comfortable with yourself or beautiful, and then everything around you is okay. So when Suzuki Roshi had cancer, you know, he didn't, wasn't some regret at not having it. Or if you live in a smog-filled city, you know, there isn't some problem about it, because Buddhism is a religion. If it's a way, you know, just, if you want to find some joy in living in a commune, or in Zazen, or in the mountains, then that's not Buddhism, but it may be some good way to live. But because Buddhism is a religion, we, there are people in the city, so we go to the city. And actually, you should have exactly the same freedom in the city or here.

[17:43]

So Suzuki Roshi used to talk about city practices being like Avalokiteshvara with many arms, and whatever form is needed, you know, that there's an arm there to do it. Or whatever form is necessary, you take that form to help people. Anyway, you move through a series of dependencies from Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, you know, always we take refuge in. But through some kind of initiation in San Francisco, and then Tassajara, where your practice begins, you get your practice started. And then maybe you return to whatever life you're going to lead, maybe in the country or the city. But it can't always, no one will live in Tassajara forever. So Buddhist practice here has to be based on how do we live in the city. How do you live under any condition? It only is based on how to live in Tassajara. It has

[19:06]

no meaning at all. You might as well close the doors. Eventually, when you're dependent on everything, not just Zen Center, then you're completely independent. I think of the Buddhist practices as the long way and the short way. And by the long ways, I mean we don't take any shortcuts. For example, announcing the Zazen, the Han goes, you know, and over there the Han goes. But actually, we could just have a buzzer.

[20:09]

The Eno could go to a little buzzer and a bell could ring in every room, just like in school, and everyone could say, ah, time for Zazen, and we could all come. That would be a shortcut. Or when we get on our pillow, we come in and we bow to our pillow, and then you sit down facing out, and then you turn around facing in. And even if you're completely by yourself in an empty room, you don't just step on your pillow. No. You just, you always do it exactly the same way. There's no shortcut. To take a shortcut means your time isn't your own. If time is completely your own possession, then you can bow, you know, 100 times,

[21:11]

it doesn't make any difference. Or you can turn. Whatever someone tells you to do, you can do. So, anyway, to take away that usual idea of time, Buddhist practice is based on doing everything the long way. But there's also, by short way, what I mean is direct experience. You know, you don't, if you hear those airplanes, like childhood airplanes that you hear going over, you don't go on a trip with them. All you hear is the sound. And when someone comes to bring me food, some people seem to have in their mind,

[22:23]

I'm supposed to offer, I'm supposed to do this, and after that, then I'm supposed to bow. So, see, I'm supposed to stick the setsu in, washing stick, and bow. But they're in such a hurry to bow that I don't have time to put the setsu in. So, ichite, I say, should I put the setsu in? So, what they're doing is they're just bowing out of some idea. But actually, I mean, even though it's just the long way, it's some kind of ritual, when you do it, you actually bow to me, and I actually bow to you. So, you have to give me a chance to put the setsu in, and I can bow. I know years ago, when I first saw the tea ceremony performed, the teacher was quite good, you know, she knew everything. And Tsukiyoshi went up, then she insisted Tsukiyoshi do it.

[23:24]

And he went up, and there was the pot, you know, and he took the dipper, and everything was perfect, but he just sort of stuck it in and pulled out the water as if it's the first time he'd ever done it. I mean, he did it all right, you know, but it was like it was the first time he'd ever done it. I was very impressed, I thought, my, there's some fresh feeling in it. I thought it's so much better than the tea ceremony. He doesn't know how to do it, and he just did it. It feels much better. Then, of course, I suspected there was more to it than that. When I got to Japan, I found that only the very best teachers can do it each time like they just thought of it. Oh, I'll pick up this cloth. So actually, when we do our ritual, you should bow to your pillow, like, oh, there's my pillow,

[24:26]

first time I've ever seen it, and then you bow, and then you sit down, and then you turn around, and then you're completely free. Someone asked me a, not exactly a question, but said something to me that I think is very interesting. Last time I was down here, and we said something, we're talking about the lineage, transmission Buddhism, and this person said, well, it doesn't make any difference, you know. I don't know exactly what, whether he meant exactly this. I'm not thinking about what he meant, but he said it doesn't make any difference because if the lineage is lost, because the sun still comes up in the morning. And that's a very attractive idea, you know, that the sun still comes up in the morning.

[25:30]

But the sun comes up for itself, you know, not for you. And you have to come up for yourself. And the sun needs some kind of hydrogen or something, you know, to burn, or a fire is not independent, it has to have air to burn. And you need to get up in the morning, you know, like the sun. You need a backbone. You can't do it without a backbone. And our society needs Buddhist culture, you know, and Buddhism needs the lineage, like a backbone. And so we need Buddhism just as much as the sun needs its own orbit, you know. Maybe Tessahara is our orbit. Maybe the Buddhist way of life, when you know it completely,

[26:37]

you're in orbit. So if you're in orbit, you can be in the city or any place, you're just in orbit. You have to know your own sun. So do you have any questions?

[28:11]

I spoke to you a lot in the last lecture that you make the transition to the group and increase, and like in the last lecture in the city a couple of months, last month, which is, you know, saying that Buddhism should infiltrate, you know, the social structure, psychology, and Buddhism, things like this, which seems like, you know, that isn't just true, you know, it seems like it's very much a right thing. And you know, also like this community isn't really free for, or that, you know, it's not, it's not directed in any direction. I don't know. Do you have any?

[29:46]

Well, there's no meaning, you know, for this stream, if it doesn't infiltrate all the trees and everything around here, or the sunshine to be part of every, actually life makes up everything. But still, you need the stream for the water to get to Carmel Valley. But if Buddhism just infiltrates the culture, next year it won't be there. There also has to be the stream in addition to the infiltration. I think there will be three kinds of influence of Buddhism in America. One is, a few people will become teachers. A lot would be nice, but I want to do something else.

[30:53]

I don't know what, you know, there'll be doctors or Indian chiefs or something. And Buddhism has been some resource for them and some, they know how to sit and maybe they'll sit each day. So Zen Center is made up of those people, and most, many of us have any idea of which one we are, you know, but at some point we leave, so then we know, or if we stay. And, but there's a third, which is maybe the most important, or at least equally important with creating teachers, which is that Buddhism offers, well, let's take in our own country, which is in such a transition in the West, it offers an alternative to what we now have. And I don't mean an alternative which you can choose rather than what we have,

[32:09]

but if you have an alternative, it makes the choice of what you have better. In other words, if you are maybe a democrat, you know, what do you call it? Catholic? Anyway, a person who believes in our country. If you do that, you know, and you know what communism is, you may be better, you know, and you're not afraid of communism, that's something else. But if you know what it is, you may actually make more sense of what it means to be capitalist, or American, or whatever. So, if people are thinking about their life here in this country, with also the possibility, alternative way of looking at things which Buddhism offers, what kind of, what is a human being from the Buddhist point of view, rather different from the Western idea of what a human

[33:11]

being is? What are the possible ways of treating each other? What are the possible social institutions? So, just if this kind of idea exists, it will help our society. Even if they don't become Buddhists, it helps our society. Some leavening or something, yeast. So actually, that was the point of, which I've told somebody recently, was the point of that second brochure we did. You know that big brochure with the kitchen just started on it, and meals, I guess, is in the picture? I do. I stand right now. And I knew that brochure wouldn't raise any money, you know. But I thought, it gives me a good excuse, gives Zen Center a good excuse to get out to a lot of people

[34:17]

some idea of what Buddhism is. So, we worked very hard on it, you know. And one of the things we did, which I don't know if you've noticed, but it's rather confusing to open up. We took the biggest piece of paper the press would take, and we tried to get the people physically involved in it, because normally you get something in the mail, you sort of, you throw it away. We tried to make it interesting enough that, ideally, as I told Peter Bailey, when he's the printer I worked with, when we were working on it, I wanted the guy to come get it, say to his wife, hey Mary, come here, would you get on the other side of this room? You know, to about five people unfolding it, you know, it's so complicated. So anyway, we've made it rather complicated to fold, and rather big piece of paper, so people get physically involved. And then I thought, they might read it, you know. And I knew they wouldn't give any money to Zen Center, you know, but I thought,

[35:21]

because we sent it to people who would never give money to Zen Center. We sent it mostly to psychologists and things like that. So you see, I was trying to infiltrate. We sent to lots of sociologists and psychologists, and it barely paid for itself, actually. The money that came back from that brochure just about paid for the printing of it. But anyway, we sent out 100,000 copies. People still show up with it right now. So anyway, I agree with what you said. So

[36:23]

have people at Zen Center tried to make any contact with people in other religious establishments, any kind of trying to bring Buddhism together with Christianity, and etc.? Well, maybe some other Zen groups are Buddhist groups. Some Buddhist groups, particularly few Buddhist groups, do do missionary work. But on the whole, Buddhism isn't not a missionary religion. And I know that's not what you're saying, but actually it pertains. And we don't try to get people to be Buddhists, or interest them in Buddhism. Someone's interested,

[37:28]

then you have to worry about it. But Buddhism isn't so interesting, actually, as I talked about last time. So I wouldn't go around wishing Buddhism on my best friend, maybe. But there's a great deal of interest from other religions in Buddhism. A lot of Christian Protestant sects are quite interested in Buddhism. And the Catholic Church is the most interested. And from the Pope on down, the Pope has given official permission to a number of people to study Buddhism. And it's been going on for, since for, I don't know, one or two hundred years that the Catholic Church has been trying to understand what Buddhism is up to. Because they noticed very early that it was having a very powerful effect on the brightest people in Europe, and artists. The philosophers and artists

[38:33]

of Europe have been under the influence of Buddhism in one form or another for quite a long time now, and it's worried the Catholic Church. And they're pretty smart, you know. And they say, what's going on here? So they've been studying it. That's why a number of the Zen scholars, Dumoulin, for instance, is a Jesuit. Zen Catholicism is by Domelder Graham. And, of course, many other people. People are always asking us for speakers. But Suzuki Roshi's way, and which I feel the same way about, too, is he never criticized any other Buddhist group or any other way. Almost, maybe slightly, you can find instances, but mostly he didn't at all. But at the same time, if a group of Buddhists or Christians got together a meeting in San Francisco saying, let's have all the Buddhists or all the people

[39:36]

at the Unitarian Church do such and such, Suzuki Roshi, if possible, wouldn't go. It sounds rather contradictory, but he felt that if we just did our own way, carefully, that would be the best way to communicate, not try to do anything else. And so the usual way of Buddhist, say, social action is to create, put together people and to create a together community as a kind of model. So, for instance, if we do this farm or house, sort of a Buddhist retreat house, where we try to find a way based on Buddhist communal traditions and Buddhist psychology, which is rather different

[40:40]

from even Jung, a way to take care of those members of our community who aren't so well able to take care of themselves, have a great deal of mental or physical suffering, or whatever. If we just aim at trying to not just take anyone who comes, just take care of people who have defined themselves one way or another as members of our community, we will actually be making quite a strong statement about the possibilities of Buddhist psychology, without ever doing anything, you know, without writing a book or anything. Question inaudible

[41:54]

Sure, I mean, I don't think we have to even make the distinction. Someone comes here and wants to study Zazen, you let them study Zazen. They can be, if the Pope comes, he can study Zazen. Question inaudible I have some question about that myself. I think if people want to study Zazen or Zen, they should come here or to some Zen group. You can go out and give talks or instruct people in Zazen. I don't think it does much good. And we used to get lots of requests, and I did it some, and I decided it was pointless. I was giving the same lecture over and over again of introduction, and it just created students who didn't have any place to go,

[42:56]

and didn't seem to have much meaning. And Suzuki Roshi stopped, and I stopped, he also asked me not to do that kind of thing. Someone asked me in San Francisco, who's pretty good, maybe too good. It's good enough that wherever he goes, a group will automatically form around him because of the kind of person he is. And he understands Buddhism very well.

[44:03]

Actually, Buddhism isn't something to understand. It's like possessing merit. Possessing merit is like being relaxed. When you're relaxed, your muscles don't possess anything. Maybe they have something when you're tight. Or talking about enlightenment. Unenlightened people have unenlightenment. But enlightened people don't have anything. So anyway, this boy, girl, is pretty good. So, what should they do? They already understand Buddhism pretty well. You can ask them a question

[45:07]

and they can answer pretty well. He answers much better than he realizes he answers, actually. But actually, all he can do is take himself out of circulation for about 10 years. He can do things, of course. But in some way, we all have to take ourselves out of circulation. In Buddhism, no matter whether you do zazen all day long or live in this community or work in the Zen Center office and don't have time to do zazen, zazen helps, of course, if you have your practice going. The important thing is to take, in a way, take yourself out of circulation for about 10 years.

[46:08]

Until it's impossible not to be in circulation, because people insist you do things. What happens over that time, I can't say, but there's some difference. You may say exactly the same thing 10 years later, but there's some difference. And that difference is what's empty.

[46:40]

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