I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. Can you hear me back there? It's really great to be back here with you. And also to be, to just be sitting in this Zendo and practicing with you, be at home with my family and be back in the U.S.S.A. Especially on this kind of bright Saturday morning in a new year. While I was sitting up here I was, I'm going to talk about my time in Japan and while I was to coming in, I was very aware of this new robe that I actually had to get there. And it occurred to me, who was it that said, beware all undertakings that involve new clothes?

[01:04]

What? Thoreau, yeah. Right. There's real truth to that. I thought I would start by reading you a poem and then talk a little about where I was, what I was doing, what was difficult about it, what was wonderful about it, and what some of the thoughts were that have been coming to me. And this is just... I'm going to be processing this for a long time, but I was looking through my notes. I took lots of notes. And during Sesshin, we had some quite good Teisho's lectures on some of Dogen's poems. And there was this wonderful poem, which I think is quite well known, but it was new to me, by Dogen.

[02:09]

The Dharma, like an oyster, washed atop a high cliff. Even waves crashing against the rugged coast like words may reach but cannot wash it away. The Dharma, like an oyster, washed atop a high cliff. Even waves crashing against the rugged coast like words may reach it, but cannot wash it away. And I think that this is, as we practice, this is actually the experience of our lives. And it sort of sets a context for some of what I experienced there. So I was gone a long time. I left on November 2nd and came back on December 14th. It's sort of a variant of what Dogen said on his return from China.

[03:16]

He returned empty-handed. Well, I didn't actually return empty-handed. I had so much luggage and so many things that people gave us. So, I didn't return empty-handed. did return with my eyes horizontal and my nose was still big. But I'm back. Where I was was at the invocation of Soto Shu, the Soto Zen headquarters. which has offices here but is mostly in Japan, with doing something that used to be called tokubetsu or special seshin, so training for teachers, and now they've changed it to something that's called dendokyoshi kenshusho, which translates I think something like training or practice session for teachers who are transmitting the Dharma.

[04:22]

And it's kind of the Soto Shu's requirement for their requirement for their certification for Western teachers who who want to register their own students with Sotoshu. And in a way, it's kind of, I sort of wonder, well, why am I doing this? And in another way, I feel like through our teachers, and our teachers' teachers, and through the tradition, I want to maintain a connection to Japan. And if they're inviting me to do this, it makes sense to do it." And that's pretty much what Sojin said, and even Lori thought it was a good idea to go, I think. And it makes sense also that like any professional organization, if you can call Zen professional, and it is there, any organization has its own sets of qualifications and rules and hoops to jump through.

[05:43]

So this was hoops to jump through. But really, it was, I saw it as a way of honoring Sojin, honoring Suzuki Roshi and our teachers, the Japanese teachers who gave us so much when they came here, gave their lives for the love of practice, and to Dogen and Eijo and Keizan and the ancestors to actually pay respects to to them, quite physically. I'll talk a little about that. to have an opportunity just to practice for six weeks, which that's very unusual for most of us and for me, to be taken out of the context of the busyness of one's life, to go someplace else where all you really need to do is practice.

[06:54]

which is not as easy as it sounds, but it was just a really special opportunity. So I was about five weeks at a quite traditional training monastery, Zuiyoji, on the southern island of Shikoku. And Zuyoji has a, it was nice, because when we got there, it's a beautiful temple, and realized there's sort of a connection with our own Dharma family, and that was part of what we learned about is kind of lineage going back a hundred or a hundred and twenty years and seeing how The teacher that Suzuki Roshi studied with was a Dharma brother of the teacher that Katagiri Roshi studied with was a Dharma brother of the teacher that

[07:57]

Uchiyama Roshi and Shohaku Okamura studied with was a Dharma brother of the teacher that Akin Roshi studied with. These different streams kind of flowing from the same sources. And also at Zuyoji what was really, felt very comfortable was they wore, they wear our kind of robes, like the robe that Eric is wearing and that Mel was wearing earlier today, this nyoho-e, where it goes over your shoulder, and the kind of rakusus, they all, you know, all the monks had the same kinds of rakusus as we have, and that's a particular sewing tradition. And it's kind of out of the mainstream of Soto Zen. And that's partly why I had to get a new robe, because actually, in Eheiji and Soji-ji, you weren't supposed to wear that kind. And you weren't supposed to, you had to wear a rock suit that had a ring. It's just, excuse me, nonsense. But that's, if you're going to be respectful to the forms, that's what you have to do, whether you think it's nonsense or not.

[09:07]

So, we were in Zuyoji for about five weeks, and we had a pretty rigorous daily schedule. We got up at about 3.30, 3.40, and we were in the zendo by four o'clock, and then the day just kind of unwound. There were no breaks of longer than about 40 minutes in the course of a whole day until nine o'clock. And that was very difficult at first, but then you sort of fall into the rhythm. It's not so different, I think, than being at Ta Sahara in many ways. Except that there wasn't an awful lot of zazen. We had zazen in the morning for about an hour, and then we had long service. Service was about an hour. and it was freezing cold. And then you went into the Sodo, the Zendo, and you did another short service.

[10:12]

You did service in what we would call the Buddha Hall, the Hato, a big hall, separate hall. And then we'd go back and did a short service in the Sodo where basically that service was acknowledging the the ancestors, the lineage. And then we had breakfast and the day went on. Every evening we had a wonderful bath. So we'd Zazen in the morning and then often Zazen in the evening before bed. But quite often that got kind of set aside for some ceremony or some training or something else. So there wasn't an awful lot of zazen. But the way they, in this tradition at Zuyochi, they consider everything zazen. Which, theoretically, is nice.

[11:14]

I have some question about it. We can talk about that. But it was a pretty full schedule of zazen. We did a lot of ceremonies. We did work. around our own hall that we had for a group of, there were six Westerners, three Americans and three Europeans, and then sort of in among the 25 or 30 Japanese monks, who were mostly young, and we were mostly old. We were mostly middle-aged, from early 50s to early 60s. And we did ceremonies, we did work, we had training in forms of different kinds, how to wear our clothes, how to walk into a room, where to stand, how to be doshi. And this was pretty interesting. And everything just pretty similar to what we do here, but enough different to throw you off every time.

[12:16]

And I took a lot of notes. And I was also quite clear that I'm happy with the training that we have here and the training that we have at Zen Center. And it's like, I don't have any sense like, oh yeah, they're really doing it the right way there and we have to bring it back here and do it that way. It's not true. It's just another way. And it's good to be able to learn. And the other main activity of our day was lectures. We had from two to three hour and a half lectures every day. In Japanese. Translated, sleep. And most of them were really boring. And that was another practice. It was a practice of practicing the paramita of patience.

[13:21]

Well, how did I know they were boring? I said they were translated. Yeah. That's how I knew they were boring. I mean, let me give you an example. One, they had this this guy who was the tanto at the Eheji Betsuin, the Eheji branch temple in Tokyo, very bright guy, he was asked to come and give a lecture, a series of lectures, he gave about six or eight, on this fascicle of Dogen's called shukkei kokudo, sort of, I think it's the merit of home leaving. he wouldn't give us the text. We had asked, and our main translator, this American guy, Daigaku, had asked him for the text, and he told Daigaku, well, no, I can't give you the text, because if I gave you the text, what would be the point in me giving you the lecture?

[14:37]

So, you know, it's like, okay. So we had to sit him essentially reading and talking a little about the text. Boring. But every now and then, something would happen that would be just kind of a flash, you know, that would be quite good. So that was what our days were like. And that was about, there was four weeks of that, and then I did rohatsu sesshin. We all did rohatsu sesshin at Zuyoji, seven day sesshin. And then we went to Eheji and Sojiji for a ceremony called haito, which is basically a kind of recognition and acknowledgement ceremony. You go and you bow to, you go up these steep stairs and they lift a screen and there are relics of Dogen and Koen Eijo and Keizan. And it's kind of a once in a lifetime experience.

[15:41]

You go up these stairs in this kind of ritual way and you bow to these relics. And then the screen lowers. And you never see it again. And you're not sure what you saw anyway because it's dark. But it's very powerful and kind of dreamlike. And then you, once you've done that, then you actually officiate at a service. So you are symbolically the chief priest of those temples for the day, which is a way of kind of publicly recognizing you and your transmission as valid, sort of announcing it. They actually literally do announce it. So, you know, that was quite affirming, mysterious and affirming.

[16:43]

We were intensely trained for about six hours the night before, and then we got up at three in the morning to do these ceremonies. By seven, it was over, and by like 8.30, we were on our train to the next place. So, we did those ceremonies. Were there 31 of you or something? No, no, no. There were six. Just six, okay. Yeah. And during the ceremonies, Really, there was only, for this particular ceremony, it was me and one other person, me and Pat O'Hara from the village Zendo in New York, who's a good friend of mine. Yeah, so it's small. No, the younger monks, they've got, that's a whole other thing. So, it was wonderful, and it was also very difficult. The difficulties, I just thought I'd outline some of what both were. I kept thinking there's this Waylon Jennings song that some of you may know.

[17:54]

I don't think Hank done it this way. Does anybody know that song? Waylon Jennings is a country and western star songwriter, singer, great musician, who passed away about two years ago, and he was reflecting on his life compared to Hank Williams' life. And I kept thinking, I had that on my iPod, the song, and I kept thinking, I kept getting, I don't think Shaq did it this way, Shaquemoonie, you know, it's like, and the question is, is this Buddhism? You know, so that was difficult. You know, is this Buddhism or is this something added on to Buddhism? But it's what we were doing. It was quite cold. You have, you know, Japan is incredibly technologically advanced society. And then in many places, they still have paper windows, you know, as a style, as a matter of practice. I was thinking, you know, the kind of, the old, the story about, you know, you could pave all the roads

[19:02]

with rubber, or you could wear rubber on your shoes. And I felt like, well, the parallel, in my experience in Japan, and you should excuse me if this seems perhaps critical or derogatory, the parallel that I found was, well, you could heat the rooms, or you could heat the toilet seats. You know, so, boy, you're really grateful for those electrically heated toilet seats. It's pretty good. Sometimes it was the only place you could go to get warm. So it was cold and the monastery style is you don't wear a hat any place and you don't wear socks. So actually I had my little black cap And whenever I'd get around the corner of the building, I would put an eye.

[20:05]

But mostly, I didn't cut any corners. As I said, there was not much Zazen, which was difficult, because Zazen was actually wonderful and grounding to us, to the Americans. And it would have helped to have done more, I think. When we did do Zazen, though, no zabatons. I mean, that's pretty much the Soto style. You know, I did no zabatons at Zuyoji, Eheji, Sojiji, and they weren't at Rinzowin when we got there the first time in 89 either. So, think about doing a seven-day session with no zabatons. Right on the tatami? Yeah, yeah. Not so easy. Right on the floor? The wooden floor? Just, yeah, it's hard. It was a training experience, which was difficult.

[21:08]

It's difficult if you're 23 years old, which most of the monks were. It's pretty much even more difficult if you're 55, 56 years old. Everything happened very fast. This morning I was thinking, oh, this is so great, I have time to put my mat out, I have time to bow, I have time to get up. Things happen like, really fast, and you know, for the first week, I was always, I felt like I was always behind, and I talked to, I had doxed on with Harada Seke, who was kind, he was one of our lecturers, and he was kind enough to talk to us, and he said, well, just be behind. You know, that's okay. Don't get caught on being behind. That was very helpful. You know, so I just, it wasn't like I took my time, but I just did what I could, you know, and tried to take care of it. We changed, we had to change our clothes like a dozen times a day, you know, in the robes, out of the robes, into Samui, out of Samui, you know, and that was part of the, it was part of the training, really.

[22:22]

So it was very much, our training was really the monk's training. And this made sense, and it was an odd position to be in, in a sense, because we were way senior, literally, in years, and also in practice, and yet, compared to these young monks, we didn't know anything. I mean, we really didn't know if we came into the Dharma Hall, or the Buddha Hall, we didn't know where to stand, or we had to be trained to show us how to actually walk in the room. You know, so this is all training, which means you go through a kind of, you have to go through a very narrow place with yourself to be able to open up and accept the training. So that was difficult. It was also difficult, the second day, a guy that I instantly liked, the Dokkan Roshi, and often the

[23:27]

the teachers are called by their position, like the Tenzo Roshi, or Dokkan Roshi, or Tanto Roshi. You're pretty much named by your position, rather than your actual name. So the Dokkan Roshi was a really good guy. Later, in the middle of Seishin, He just came up to me, we were walking down the hall and passing, and he just came up to me and stopped and smiled and said, Kushiki-san, ganbatte. Which was, it was not just, it was really, it was like boom, really reached me. It was not a formalism, it was just very sweet. He was really encouraging me. means persevere, go for it. I think it's a pretty common Japanese expression.

[24:28]

On the second day, I think at a I was really happy to see that you all knew how to use chopsticks. Then I thought, OK, things are going to be OK. And this was very sweet, on the one hand. And on the other hand, you're just like, what have we been doing for 20 or 30 years? So a difficult thing is reckoning with, A fairly common experience coming at us that no Westerner could really know anything about Zen or things that were culturally different. And there's a little bit of truth in that, but not that much.

[25:36]

We've been trying to do this for a long time. We do know how to eat with chopsticks. We know how to bow. In fact, our training is very good. There was nothing that we did that was radically unfamiliar. But that came at us. It came at us in subtle ways and in unsubtle ways, but also it was not harsh. It was very kind. So that was good. The whole feeling at Zuyoji was really wonderful that way. And then the final difficulty was just that our group had maybe not the best group dynamics, our group of six of us. And it wasn't so easy. We didn't get along so well. Actually, I got along with everybody, but there were these two clusters that didn't get along, and I don't want to go into it.

[26:38]

But I think the real truth of it is that this was so hard for all of us. I'll say that the first three days, I really didn't know if I could do this. And then checking with other people that came out, they didn't know if they could do it. I just thought, maybe I'm going to have to pack it in and go home. which would be terrible, you know. And I had, you know, it's like I had this tightness in my belly and my body was tight and I was cold. And it was, I just said, you know, I've experienced this before with myself. So let me sit with this discomfort and let's see where it goes. You know, if it really gets bad, then go. But I think it's going to move, which is what it did. But I think part of the reason that we didn't get along well as a group was that everybody was in survival mode.

[27:45]

Everybody was having a very hard time. It's hard if you're 50. One guy had had two heart attacks. Had had. Had had. But he had had one. No, but it's interesting. He had one earlier that year, but he had one 15 years ago when he was at AHAG. He was at AHAG for a year, and it's like he's the kind of guy that was in heavy denial. He had a heart attack, but he was at AHAG, so he just ignored it and just went on, you know, running down the halls, polishing the things. And he just figured, and I admire him for this, I think it's kind of nuts, but I admire him. He just said, well, if this is where I'm meant to die, this is okay. That was the decision that he reached. So those are the difficulties. It was also wonderful.

[28:48]

The spirit of Zuyoji which is, you know, very traditional monastery, really trying to do this Dogon's practice, was very warm and encouraging and kind. And that spirit flowed from the abbot, Narasaki Sugen, who was just, he looked a little like Yoda, you know, very strong, but very warm and kind and flexible. And just, he was joyous. And that's what flowed from the top down through all the monks and all the teachers. And unlike places like Eheji or Sojiji, there was none of this kind of martial feeling. Even though they did Dogen's practice, they did it in a very natural, physically natural way. It was not easy, but they were when they moved it wasn't in this, there was nothing mannered about their movements. I don't know, some of you have been to AEG and Sojiji, right? And you've seen the way they, you know, it's almost like choreographed.

[29:53]

It wasn't like that. People just moved and people made mistakes because it was a training monastery and, you know, they didn't get yelled at. They would make a mistake and then we had Choson every morning, Choson like morning tea, and we'd line up and they would make a cup of matcha, you know, ground tea that's, green tea that's whipped up. Everybody got a cup of matcha. But before, we do like we do in Shosan, also we do our bows and then we turn around and say, we say good morning or ohayou gozaimasu. So they would say ohayou gozaimasu and then whoever had made a mistake the day before would just say I'm sorry and it would be gone. you know, and they wouldn't be berated for it. So the practice there was very nice. It was beautiful. You can see there's, I put up some pictures outside of kind of some of what we experienced.

[30:56]

The young monks were really smart. You could just see, you know, sometimes you look around, you see a look of intelligence on somebody's face. It's like, well, you saw this on everybody's face. on all these guys' faces, and I liked them. We got to be friends with them. We worked with them. We worked in the kitchen every third day, and we went begging with them, which that's a whole other thing. It was pretty funny. The food was wonderful. breakfast in the zendo, and then two meals in this kind of dining hall, and it was always good and wholesome. It was surprising, sometimes they served meat or fish. They served whatever was offered by the danka, the community. So if people gave sushi or something, then we got served it. The meals, you'll see there's a meal, there's a picture of an orioke meal out there.

[31:58]

The meals at Sashin were like completely over the top. We had seven bowls. Your usual preset has five bowls, and we only used three. So the five bowls, and then they would come around with trays with these extra side dishes, which would be like a big plate of fruit or tempura or something. It was quite incredible. The food was good. And I ate all I wanted and lost 15 pounds. Maybe this is a new weight loss program. And it was like, it wasn't Weight Watchers, we ate a lot of starch. At first, it was heavy on starch. We had meals, we'd have breakfast that had like rice gruel and then three kinds of potatoes. It's like, what are they thinking? But it was delicious. And the cooks, we really, we hit it off with the cooks a lot. Just to practice and train there was a wonderful gift.

[33:05]

It's sort of embedded in my mind and now it's a place that I have some real connection to. I'm glad. Of all the places we could have gone, this is one of the most wonderful. Our helpers from Soto-shu were great, the younger guys. The older guys, the heads of departments, I'm not so sure about. That's another story. But the younger guys who were in their 40s, Ikki-san, who's in San Francisco, they were so sweet. And they had a hard time, too. They were really not used to sitting zazen. So they skipped a lot. they just were always helping us in surprising and subtle ways. One of them, our friend Konin-san, a Japanese guy in the Soto education office in Yokohama, out of the blue he

[34:07]

you know, in Tokyo rather, he appeared at our haito at Soji-ji. We were so happy to see him. You know, it's like he was so busy and he just came to be with us. He didn't need to be with us. You know, he just felt connected after being with us for three and a half weeks. So I'm deeply appreciative of them. So, some final thoughts and then a few minutes for questions. My main practice, I had to work a lot containing my own preferences, my dislikes, my like of practice here. And so I practiced a lot trying to contain them and trying to keep a kind of silence and not, you know how easy it is to Try to get somebody on your side. It's like, if I don't like something or I don't like someone, then try to get an ally who also doesn't like it.

[35:14]

But try not to conspire about dislikes. Therefore, planting it more firmly. And also, to try not to be drawn into situations where other people were trying to do that. It happened around one of the teachers. One of the teachers, people really didn't like. They really thought he was arrogant and he was not open to us. And they were really trying to argue us into this point of view, people in our group. And I just didn't want to do that. because it was also something that I was getting from this teacher. So containing the preference, containing dislikes, that was a very important practice. And in the context of that practice, also

[36:16]

It took a week or so to finally clarify this thought as a practice for myself. Finally, just saying yes to everything. Whatever they asked us to do, just say, okay, I'm going to do it. A lot of it made no sense, or I didn't even know what was going on, or they hadn't explained it. So the practice was just to say yes, which is difficult for Westerners. I think it's more part of the training, actually, of being in a Japanese culture. But, you know, we can resist it tooth and nail. And I just tried to do that, and I feel good for doing that. Working with my comparing mind, you know, trying to think, you know, this doesn't make sense, but this, you know, what we do here makes sense.

[37:22]

Or what we do here, you know, it's kind of lame compared to what they do there. It's just like, forget it. This is not useful. When you're there, you do what's there. When you're here, you do what's here. And over time, you find what works, what's useful. I've been thinking, and I will think for a long time, sort of questioning the institutional or organized religion nature of Soto Zen, particularly there, not so much here. And yet, I also appreciate the connection. I appreciate the people that I meet who are really practicing, and there are plenty of them. there's a large question of what is our relationship for the long run? It's a relationship between East and West.

[38:24]

Where is that going to go? And it actually may not go anywhere. I don't know. But mostly what I value is just connecting with people. I'm not so interested in making official connections with Soto Zen is like the Vatican, you know. This is not faith, this is organization. And yet, within any organization, organizations are made of people. And, you know, there's something of great value there in those people. So that's an open question. And finally, from very early on, just incredible gratitude to our teachers, our present teachers, to Sojin, but also to Suzuki Roshi, and Maezumi Roshi, and Katagiri Roshi, and Kobunchino, and other people like I study with this Rinzai teacher, Harada Shodo, all of whom worked on trying to figure out

[39:41]

what to bring here to the West and what to leave behind. And it's just like, I feel that they went about this with a kind of genius that's hard to, you know, it's like where did that, how did they figure that out? How did they know what to leave, what to take? And I'm very grateful because everything, there's nothing that we do Everything that we do, I saw done there. Like the meal chant that we do this morning, same thing. The meal ritual, the serving, virtually the same, translated into English. And what I also think is great is we haven't added on to it. We haven't made it more Baroque or more elaborate. There were no elaborations that have evolved here. So there's something really

[40:42]

clear and pure about what, you know, a clear stream that flowed to us from those teachers. And I think that it's really important for us to preserve that clarity, you know, not pollute it and be respectful of it. The other thing that that they saw was, which doesn't much exist there in Japan, was our teachers had this vision of a kind of hybrid lay ordained. They didn't see such a distinction between priests and lay people, whereas there still is a very complete distinction. The practice that we saw at Zuyoji, wonderful as it was, was almost entirely for monks. monks, not even monks and nuns. Nuns were welcome. They came during Sashin. But you had a practice that was not... very few lay people, very few women, and very little kind of social engagement which we have here, which many of us have been involved in.

[42:00]

So I'm grateful for our teachers' encouragement in that. And the last point, you know, many of us over time, it's not necessarily at the beginning, we learn to love zazen. We really see it as what, Dogen referred to it as the dharma gate of repose and bliss. And maybe it's not so blissful for the first 10 years or so, but it can come to be that. And whenever you do it, it's a refuge. And I think we have that in our bones, and that's part of the stream that flows through us. Our teachers really loved Zazen. I think in a lot of ways that's why they left Japan, you know, because there's a lot of lip service given to it, but there's not a lot of people practicing Zazen.

[43:05]

In fact, the Tanto Roshi was reported to us by one of the students at Tsuyoji. He said something like, well, nobody likes Zazen, but we have to do it. You know, this is not exactly what was brought to us. Sometimes we don't like Zazen. But this love of Zazen, I think, is the most precious thing that was given to us. It was an attitude which we have to then embody and discover for ourselves. And we do it in faith. I did it in faith. It was not easy for me for a very long time, but I had faith in it and I could see it working in some way. And now, just to come in here, particularly come in like on New Year's Eve, which was my first time back in the Zen Dojo, and just sit for three or four hours, just like, ah.

[44:10]

And then the same thing this morning. And I regret that I didn't meet a lot of people there who I felt had access to that experience. So that's enough. It's almost, well, it's almost time to end, but I have time for a few questions. Thank you for listening to my rambling. Sue? Yeah. I can't say. It was very male. You know, and I can't say whether it was I think part of the discomfort for Pat and for Sayson Saunders, they're both disciples of Maizumi Roshi and Bernie Glassman, was in the maleness.

[45:14]

And we talked about that. It wasn't a harsh kind of maleness, you know. But, you know, you knew that you were the only women there. So that's already puts you in a certain class. There were more women who came in for Seshim. And there were women who have trained there and practiced there. The place was open to it, but structurally it was not easy. And all the teachers there? They were all men. And all the monks were men. There were no nuns there at the moment. And I'm not quite sure if they would have known what to do with one. But it's happened from time to time. I think Tia practiced there. I think she was there for a while because the category where she was very closely connected with Zuyoji. Linda. I want to tell you about my reaction to your orange string that you came in with.

[46:16]

And I'll tell you about this too. Yeah, go ahead. So, as soon as I saw it, I'd seen the pictures just now, as soon as I saw it I thought, oh no, he's got an orange string. He's come back with doodads. I always have a reaction of irritation to additional doodads. Then my association with it. I saw you bowing and you had to do an extra little flip for that. That's right. On your nice little simple stick. That's right. association with the last little colorful image was, you know, this is like a noose. This is a fetter. So what do you say? I say I did it on purpose so that I would have to deal with it and you would have to deal with it.

[47:17]

And I did it It's like, not from now on. One of the things I thought about is, well, if I embodied all these forms, then I could do things that were fancier than Mel. Not that he doesn't know how to do them, which is totally not what I want to do. Which in a way is exactly, if you can stretch your logic and your mind in some way, that's exactly why I decided, okay, they gave me this. This was given to me at Soji Jiren, buy it. I wouldn't have bought it. I have the one that Mel gave me, the kotsu that Mel gave me, which I love, and it's actually much better made. This one, the scroll doesn't go through, you know. But they gave me this, and I thought, as long as I'm talking about Japan, I should bring out the Japanese paraphernalia.

[48:23]

And the same thing, I don't plan to wear this robe every day, even though there's actually nothing fancy about it. But I find it a little bit garish. But I thought, well, this is what I had to wear. So it's good that it pushes buttons. And it gives us something to think about and talk about. But Rujing, we learned a lot about Dogen. Rujing, Dogen teacher, he actually didn't even wear his okesa. He only kept a very plain okesa and sort of railed against these brocade-robed priests. And he was so dedicated to this that most of the time he didn't even wear his okesa. You know, not out of lack of reverence, but out of cultivating simplicity. And I think it's good that we cultivate the simplicity. And I wore my Nyoho-e robe as much as I could because I like that.

[49:28]

You know, it's made my hand. So, that's a short answer. Paul. I was curious, how did you get the Japanese translated? Oh, we had this great guy who works at the Soto Zen Education Center in San Francisco, Daigaku Rumei. He lives at San Francisco Zen Center. Daigaku, I think, means like tall tree, and he's like 6'7". He's like taller than Ko, I think, or about. Does he have hair? No, he has no hair. And he's skinny, too. He looks like one of the Ents, actually. He lived 27 years at Hoshinji, and so he's pretty functionally bilingual. He did a great job. So he was translating everything for us. Did he do it verbally? Yeah. Well, no. Back and forth. they would stop, yeah.

[50:32]

Yeah. Thank you for your sharing. I don't want to change the topic, but you know why I'm talking. I want to bring this connection, the connectedness you are talking about. You experienced that everything was dozen over there. No, actually what I experienced was they said everything was Zazen. I'm not so sure that everything was Zazen. So I want to see that concept bringing to the Irkut has happened. Yeah. In Iran. Yes. And you all heard for last, well this year, my concern and also the peace, bringing the peace to that area. And here what's happening to the earth is the whole thing nature changed, the politics, everything changed. 44 countries now, they are in the airport, small airport of Bam.

[51:40]

And everybody wants to collaborate and bring the peace. So as an association we announced Bam as the land of the peace. That's why I want to talk to you and I want to help everybody here to bring them anything you can think. Not as far as they need food, they don't need food, they don't need blankets. It's just, it's piled there. Every country is trying to give more and more. And also, the whole abandonment about Iran and the situation, everything is gone. They took everything politically from there. Everybody is getting, just talking about peace. So, what I'm seeing, looking at how nature has a power, and the mother nature, what's done, I can't, it just, it's out of our thought, and out of our power.

[52:44]

And I want to share with you this. Even though it's an earthquake, 15,000. 15,000. And this shouldn't happen to other lands. And the same earthquake happened here, we lost two people. The same, you know, over six. So this is the first time it's happening in that area. It's not the land of earthquake. This is the first time it's happening, and it's all sand. That area is all desert and sand. And the most survival are the kids. It's amazing. 5 o'clock in the 527 minutes in the morning, everybody's sleeping inside. And the kids are the most survival. The kids are five months old, six months old, three years old. It's amazing how the whole energy has happened in this man. So let me ask you, let me make a suggestion and ask a question.

[53:46]

The question, and then we'll end, the question is, What's your request from us? I need the ideas from you. How we can keep this become as a real goal to United Nations. We are sending the press and having the website and really bringing that to the land of the peace. The nations are there, but making And also, I had two interviews this morning. They called me, told me there is a problem. I had already been in the news already. So I need this energy. We need this help as a group. Well, let me make a suggestion. You should talk to Sue. who had its turning wheel, but also after, when we go out, why don't, you know, anybody who would like to talk to Sonia about it, please do.

[54:51]

I think this is, I think this is a, it's important and this is a good connection to make at the end. Okay? Thank you. Thank you.

[55:00]

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