Grace was ordained as it was. us remember some of the women ancestors in the Chinese and Japanese Zen tradition that we would do well to remember. We don't know well enough, so thank you for coming here today. Thank you for having me, and I was very happy to see Sojin this morning, and happily surprised I might say, when I entered his office with the key. And it just shows how much habitual mind enters every moment.

[01:28]

Of course, if I'm giving the talk, he must not be here, so that's how we think, and we walk around asleep. So, of course, that's always the subject of what our practice is, and I had some good experience with it this morning. I wanted to talk this morning about the travel I've been doing in Japan and what the practice there has meant to me and what it has taught me. And I invited the people who went with me and Peter on the trip that we just led in Japan to talk about what meant something to them, what affected them. Because it's always surprising, you know, what it is that touches you and what it is that becomes part of you when you practice. sometimes it's very surprising and I hope to talk a little bit about Dogen's trip to China and the surprises that he had when he was there as well and finally to talk about what it means to us and how it affects our practice to enter a new realm, a new place to practice such as opening your teacher's room and private space with the key and finding him there and you had no

[02:50]

ideas or rules about what would happen. So I wanted to start out with a story in China, as you all know that Buddhism started in China and then traveled to China, started in India and traveled to China and then on to Korea and Japan. So the story starts of course in China, although I'm sure there was a similar one in India, and I forget the names of the teachers and students involved. So we'll just say that Wang Li asked his teacher, how do I enter the way? And the teacher says, do you hear the sound of the mountain stream? And Wang Li says, yes. He says, enter there. And later, this story is being told in Japan. And Monk Kan says to his teacher, what if he had said, no, I can't hear the sound of the mountain stream, what then?

[04:04]

How would he enter? And the teacher says, Wang Li, or in this case, Monk Kan, Monk Khan?" And the monk says, yes. He says, enter there. Enter right here. And this is our practice. In a certain way, when I first heard this story, I thought, well, this is wonderful. Practice is everywhere. And our listening to this story tells us that whether we focus on something so-called outside of ourselves, or if we find the way to turn, towards our own awareness, any which way, there's always a way to deepen our practice. So that was how I related to this, and it's certainly one level. And more recently, thinking about this story and why it had so much juice for me, I thought, well, that stream, that roaring stream, is the stream of our formal Buddhist practice.

[05:14]

And when we enter the zendo, we hear that stream, and we feel that stream, and we feel the power of our lineage. We feel this formal practice that we do together. It's quite palpable to us, and we know what to do. Of course, I think the most commonly asked question is, so I know how to practice in the Zendo, what do I do when I'm outside of the Zendo with all the other people who don't know, they don't realize that we're practicing together? What do I do then? So this, in a certain way, was Monk Khan's question. What if they can't hear that roaring stream? What if they don't feel the Dharma? What if they don't feel this practice that is the essence of so many religions, of leaving our selfishness behind so that we can relate to this gift of life. What if they don't know that? Then what? And his teacher says, enter here, right here.

[06:19]

And so, to me, the story took on a different kind of meaning, a meaning of how do we practice formally entering the stream over and over again, even when we've been in it before, it's still a different stream. How do we do that with freshness? And how do we practice with just our hearts, with what matters to us, finding the places that we're stuck and continually turning towards that? How do we keep entering the practice more deeply? And this is not a small problem. Of course, you have the wonderful advantage of being able to come to the stream regularly and enter the Zen Do and I encourage you to continue to do so as much as possible. I always felt when I lived close by that the most important thing was a regular daily practice with a Sangha.

[07:20]

because this helps in two ways. We really hear the stream. It's a body-to-body transmission when we're together. And we also do the other, in that we are bruised often, and our feelings are hurt, and we get to turn a little and say, what's that? Where am I sticking there? So we have both kinds of teachings. I think for myself, curiosity has been something of a problem. So I was rather curious about the practice in Japan, and so I had some intention of going over there to check it out. I think that this is an interesting experience for Westerners who go to Japan and say, well, I've been practicing all these years, I know how to do this. And so that was probably my motivation to say, well, do I know how to do this?

[08:22]

Or what are they doing? Or what does it mean when we do these things? What does it mean? We have these aspects of practice, what's formal and perceivable, you know, as we do things together in this endo. And we also have the process of what's personal and what's hidden, what's our own private practice. And this is made up of the aspects of the way we encounter ourselves, our actual selves, not what we think is true about ourselves, but the way we actually are with each other. And I like to say to my own students, so this is the way you thought it was going to turn out, right? Yeah, that's the way I thought it was gonna turn out. But this is the way it turned out. Okay, so which is correct? Your ideas about it or the actual reality of it?

[09:22]

So we keep finding how our actual reality about our actual ideas about it differ from actual reality. So our ideas about it, for example, that Sojin isn't in this office. We wake up to our thinking process over and over again when we're with the Sangha. And our personal practice really begins to take root in our bodies and in our hearts when we encounter something, and I say, where the rubber meets the road, where it is you want to do something but you see that there's some problem, there's some conflict, there's some selfishness that you're sticking to, and then you have to choose. Do I choose to practice? Or do I choose to do this thing that feels kind of good and kind of bad? That's kind of... And then I've been doing all along. This is where the rubber meets the road, where we turn in towards our practice and say, this is how I want to do this.

[10:31]

I want to trust this practice with my life, with my actual life. So in our travels in Japan, We had the benefit of being very well in the middle of this roaring stream of Zen, the formal aspects, which we see so well represented in the architecture and in the monks' practice. in the manners of the Japanese people. Not to say that they don't have problems, but we feel at home there in a way that sometimes surprises us, and we really feel contained and in the middle of something very powerful. But it's not quite our own. It's not something that we can really taste in a certain sense, because

[11:33]

I have a friend in Japan who said to me that the way is like the wind. You can only see where it's been. So when you see the architecture and you see the vigor of the practice, you know the way has shaped it, the architecture and the practice has come out of some deep understanding, but you can't quite get your hands on it, right? It's maybe too close to you. And so that's one level of encountering the practice in Japan. And the other level is how we bring it to life with each other as we were traveling as a sangha. My curiosity and excitement about sharing my experiences in Japan maybe even got the better of me, and people complained about being tired, but nobody wanted to give up any of the activities.

[12:41]

We went from one thing to another and of course this required a massive focus on the group versus on ourselves. If you have 20 people or 19 people waiting for one person, that's 19 people times 5 minutes. We just wasted a lot of time and also people get really frustrated. I've been on two other practice related trips in Japan and waiting for people and frustration involved in the eruption of... anger that arose over all this was really a lot to manage. So I thought, well, let's try to make it our practice, which is how is it we become one body together, just as we do during Sashin, during Oriyopi, during our walking meditation and so on. How is it that we travel together as one body? And, of course, this requires a fair bit of trust that you're going to be okay. This is always the issue when you enter a group.

[13:45]

I want to fit in into the group, but will I get my needs met? Will I be okay? So this trust is part of something that we cultivate, you know, by being kind to one another in this end setting and so on. But it can't just be trust, as the Japanese sometimes say about our desire to practice mommy and daddy's in. you know, we're just being cuddled and everything's okay. They refer to it like that. On the other hand, we don't want to do the samurai style that they're doing either. It's just not culturally appropriate. I sometimes think and have told the story before of my grandchildren and a game that I play with them called Washing Machine. And my six-year-old grandson is now at the place where he wipes off. If you kiss him, he wipes it off. And if you try to hug him, he goes, yuck, and pushes you away.

[14:49]

So he's at that stage. But he still needs very much to be held, like we all do. It's just still finding a way. So I invented this game called Washing Machine, where I say, I take him in my arms, and I say, Jacob had a pretty tiring day at school today, and I introduced whatever happened at school. He went to chess club, and he came home, and he was pretty tired and hungry. He thought he would take a bath, but then he saw the washing machine. He said, well, it would be easy for me to get in the washing machine and just get clean that way. So he went, the washing machine! And I shake, and I shake him, and he screams and laughs. And in the meantime, he's getting hugged. And I'm getting a hug from him. So I have my ways. But I think our practice is like that. We need to feel that holding and we need to feel safe enough.

[15:50]

But there needs to be some vigor where we get scared just a little bit. We know it's going to be okay. We're probably not going to be killed by Seshin, but almost. So it's just a little bit of both. To shake us loose of what we're holding on to in an environment of love and compassion. So I think this was what I had in mind for the trip. It may have come out on either side too much probably on the washing machine side for the shaking side for some of the people who were there. But what happens in that kind of environment is that one feels safe enough to let down a little bit and to hope that the needs get met and to feel vulnerable and yet because things are moving rather quickly, the defenses and the fears arise. And in the environment of the beautiful stream of Buddhist practice, one sees what's arising.

[16:53]

It's illuminated, so we see what's going on with us. So this was my idea for the trip, and we're going to get to hear from some people who are here who went on the trip as to what it was actually like. So for me, there was of course the encounter with the formal practice and being a little bit blown away by it, but like Dogen, it was the personal encounters that really moved me a great deal. As I said, there's this aspect of practice how it's embodied. When Dogen went to China, it's a little bit like our situation of us going to Japan.

[17:53]

He went to China because he said, what does this mean? I'm doing this practice, and he had this question. I'm doing this practice, and in this practice I'm told that there is Buddha nature. He actually changed that expression from, I have Buddha nature to I am Buddha nature. But while he had the question, it's like there is this thing, there's this Buddha nature. And yet we're going through all of this ritual to uncover it. What is this about? Of course he was quite young, about 20. But even so, you know, Zen had been in Japan for a longer time than it's been here. So they say the first 500 years are the toughest. So we're somewhere 50, 200 years into that in terms of making it a practice where we know what to do when we're outside of the zendo, when we know when our name is called, how to enter. So he was at that questioning point himself.

[18:58]

And I found it very interesting to look at when he went to China, what moved him? What was it that moved him? So the first thing I want to say is one of the things that moved him was some of the practices, the putting the kesa on the head, which has become very much part of the, or the raksu on the head. He had never seen that before. So here was the formal stream of practice that he encountered when he went to China. But really what he writes about more than anything else is his encounter, his personal encounter with the cook and what happened when he talked about his ideas about practice with the cook because he was just a young guy and he had lots of ideas the way all of us do intellectual ideas and reading of sutras and so on about how it worked.

[20:00]

and he asked the cook, so what's the big deal about your cooking? Why are you knocking yourself out this way? And the cook said, you know, you don't really understand. You don't understand the words and you don't understand discipline, which is the personal bodily encounter with practice where we make it our own by encountering our own difficulties in the light of the practice and choosing to practice with them. So you don't understand either one of these actually. And the cook said back to him, and I take this from Dogen's formative years in China. So the cook said back to him, to study words is to study the origin of the words. and to study discipline is to study the origin of the discipline. In other words, we can't repeat the words and think that we understand the practice.

[21:07]

What do the words come from? Where does the Dharma come from in us? This is a different experience than just saying the words. So to understand the words is to understand the origin of the words. And to understand discipline is to understand the origin. To understand the source of suffering in each of us, not to study, oh, the Buddha said this about suffering, but to study it with ourselves. And of course this became his teaching, to study the Buddha Dharma, is to study the self. to study the self is to forget the self and to let the myriad dharmas arise and to become us. The other thing that impressed Dogen was his encountering the documents of succession. His emotional, spiritual, familial relationship to the Dharma, which is very intimate, that went right back to the Buddha, and he had never seen these documents of succession in Japan.

[22:20]

And to a certain extent, this is an aspect of our personal entry into the way, our relationship to the personal, that there were ancestors who gave their lives, who devoted their lives and all of their attention and all of their energy so that we would know something about how to do this and the intimacy of that. So he encountered that through the documents of succession. So on my trips to Japan, I was also taken with the physical aspects of the Japanese practice, both at Eiheiji and Tofuku-ji. It's very interesting how those temples are linked. When Dogen came back from China, he was actually there at the same time the founder of Tofuku-ji was in China.

[23:29]

and they actually cross paths, maybe even were at the same temples together. And the founder of Tofuguji ended up in a Rinzai temple, and Dogen ended up in a Soto temple. And when Dogen came back to Kyoto, supercharged, actually the founder of Tofuguji was born the same year as Dogen, 1200. Only he lived to be about 80 years old, I think, maybe 84. and when Dogen came back to Kyoto he was supercharged with this energy of this Dharma and very intent on having it be just what he had taken in, in Sung Dynasty China or the Sung Dynasty style, and he was passed over for the first Zen temple that was actually constructed for the practice of Zen. by the powers that be, the imperial family, shogun, I don't know which one it came from. But the first temple that was actually built for the practice of Zen, not a temple that was converted to Zen, but a temple that was actually built for the practice of Zen was Tofubu-ji in Kyoto in 1220 or 1230, 1230 I think, something like that.

[24:40]

He was passed over and it was given to Eni Mennen, who was in China at the same time as Dorya. So this caused Dogen to say, well, things aren't going that well, and I'm not in favor, and there are all these problems. At least this is one of the stories about it. So he went off to found Eheji. Anyway, both of these temples have such a force that goes beyond the architecture and the practices that are occurring. It seems as though the walls absorb the practice, and the trees and the mountains around it absorb the practice. There's a real power there. And certainly people that we meet at these temples, the abbot of Tofubuji, Fukushima Roshi, who I've gone practice with, with Sojin Roshi's kind permission. there was a kind of force, and I knew that force actually from having encountered it both with Suzuki Roshi and with Sojin Roshi, but it had a gentler feeling than it had when it came out of Fukushima.

[25:47]

Maybe that's the difference between Rinzai and Sota. The force that came out of Fukushima was like, whop! and hit me really hard, which I didn't experience. I felt a more permeated quality around Suzuki Roshi, that something about his teaching was permeating, but not knocking me over, which is what I felt with Fukushima Roshi. And at Eiheiji, I was able to meet with the Zenji there. I went for the shuso ceremony for Hoitsu Suzuki-san, and there was this, I think he's 104 now and he's still alive, but he was at the time about 100 when I went, and he still sat in full lotus, however he couldn't walk, so you make your choices, you make your choices. I'm not saying that sitting in full lotus for 100 years did that to him, but he made his choice anyway, he was carried in on like a palanquin. But he had a body that was like paper, it was almost gone, you know, after a hundred years you wear it away, you know, you don't even have a warranty anymore in a hundred years.

[26:57]

It was almost gone, but it was filled with, you could experience it being filled with this warm, light, love, you know, just as being there kind of lit up your heart. So I was able to experience, as Dogen did, this personal embodiment, and that's what really struck me. And the other thing that I came away with, I won't say walked away with, maybe I limped away with, after sitting there for these horrendous periods, was the inappropriateness of the practice for people of our age, my age, middle-aged people who weren't starting as young monks. So a big question for me was, how do we enter from here? what is the way we enter from here? We're not entering from there. We're not going to be able to cut off attachments in the same way that young monks do at 16 or 18 or 20 when they sit there.

[28:08]

When I was at Tsui Oji for my Dendo Kyoshi training, which I did last year, the monks we were talking to, they were in their early 20s. Oh, I peaked at 18, they told us. It's a lot harder now, you know, they were 22 and 24 and they're talking to somebody at six years, although I peaked at 18, it's been downhill ever since, you know, in terms of their ability to keep the schedule and do the practice. So that's not going to work for us. So what is? How are we going to encounter ourselves? How are we going to enter? And what are the ways that we will use? So this is something of what I hoped would transpire when we traveled together, that people would have this experience of being in the stream. And also, because we were traveling together under rushed circumstances, as it always is, and where you don't know the language, all of your difficulties would come up, and we would have some

[29:12]

light shining to help us see how to turn. So now I'd like to ask some of the people who were there with us to talk about what did they see, you know, what was it for them, you know, not the document of succession or putting the case on the head perhaps, but what was it for them that really moved them when they were on the train? The Rock of Ages. Yeah, the Rock of Ages will someday wear away, but when will this suffering end? That's what it was like for me. Yeah, this is, I think, is a really simple but wonderful summation of Buddhist practice. You know, things change naturally. You know, even this body will wear away and everything on the planet, but unless we turn towards our suffering and address it, it will just continue.

[30:13]

And we'll just continue as we see in our world. So I just wanted to thank you and Peter Sonne again for a wonderful trip and just say that how grateful I am that both of them put so much work into organizing this trip and it really flowed in a wonderful way. It's not a trip for the fainthearted. one really has to do this kind of trip in a way that you're turned toward to practice every moment. Because traveling with 20 people, getting in and out of subway trains or trains or just anyone of a number of things, or all having lunch together, it really was this sense of one body.

[31:14]

And if you forget, if you fall into a forgetful state, that's where your suffering starts. And for me, I guess, I've been practicing for a pretty long time. After this trip, I felt like I hadn't even scratched the surface, especially after going to AKG and seeing the monks. I've seen the forms there where they seem to just levitate across the floor when they're walking. It was mindful. So it was a wonderful trip, and I want to return. Yes, so that's what was shown to you by the trip, isn't it?

[32:19]

All the wonders and the rough edges within the wonders. Somebody else? Yes, Stephanie. I had a wonderful trip with everyone I went with. I had never traveled with a large group before. I guess what I noticed most is how I was attached to my things. For example, I brought way too much luggage. And after schlepping that luggage around and shipping it and getting a special box, when I got home I thought, what can I let go of? I even left some things there, because I couldn't fit them in my luggage. I really appreciated the experience of traveling to Japan and going to Heiji and Tokuguchi and sitting and having one of the monks slap me twice on the shoulders.

[33:30]

I was there and I went for it. Anything that was there to do, I did. And I came back feeling very grounded in my practice. Yes, Ellen. I want to say it was a really wonderful trip for me also. I think Grace and Peter's experience being in Japan afforded us the opportunity to meet people we wouldn't have met otherwise and wouldn't have had the opportunity to meet. I was surprised at the similarities between Fukushima and Sochi. They didn't look a little bit alike. He started out by telling jokes, you know. He was joking around quite a bit. I was very surprised. And I also feel like two weeks in a country is such a short amount of time.

[34:38]

And it's really, you know, I really had all these questions about practice in Japan and Japanese culture, you know, before I went. I really feel like I have no idea. I mean, you really can't get a sense of a culture after two weeks that's anything deeper than, you know, just stereotypes, maybe. But I do feel like the practice that we got into as a group, with Group Mind, that Grace really emphasized in the beginning, I think people were really resistant because it's different from our typical way of being, you know, and all these people in their 30s and 40s and 50s, you know, I don't know, but everybody's used to doing their own thing and not being in a group that's sort of herded around. But after a while, I think we kind of came together as a group because we saw, first of all, how much easier it was. I mean, it was really kind of a safety issue. I mean, if you got lost, I mean, you were kind of, really, you know? It could be a really bad situation. Yeah, I could fall out of that washing machine.

[35:39]

So it was a really, and then to see that that is part, a really integral part of Japanese culture is to put the group first before the individual. And I think it has both positive and negative implications, but I think that's something that our culture could learn a lot from. And I was also really curious about the Japanese and how they practice, especially how the lay people practice, because of course they don't sit, mostly. And so going to different temples and watching how people, mostly what they do is they put money in an offering box that's in front of a, you know, altar and then they say a prayer or they bow. And one of the most powerful interactions that I had was with, I didn't really interact with this woman, but I just witnessed this woman praying to a gigantic image of Kanon Bodhisattva. In this temple called Sanjusangendo, there's a thousand images of standing, golden standing, canon bodhisattvas.

[36:46]

And the thousandth one is this giant, you know, seated bodhisattva that's as tall as our zendo, seated, with all these arms. And, you know, you just look at her and you just feel like, this woman's got it all together. Whatever problem you have, she can deal with. She's got every implement you can imagine. a woman very neatly dressed in a beautiful kimono, a traditional kimono, she had put some money in, she had her little purse with her, and she was praying very sincerely for quite a while, silently. And I just thought, this is the practice of Japan, this is kind of a sense of Japan. And then the other interesting encounter that I had was one time when I was separated from the group and had to meet them. We were going to Pukuchi, and so I was by myself on the train getting to the stop I needed to get to, and I was wearing my rakusu, and I was dressed kind of like this. My hair was even shorter, and I had all my luggage and my umbrella and whatever, and I was on the train.

[37:51]

I got on the train, and there were these two young Japanese guys in their maybe early 20s sitting across from me. They both had long hair, dyed blonde, cowboy boots, gold chains, wearing black. And they took one look at me and just cracked up. I mean, they couldn't stop themselves from laughing. They just kept trying to stop laughing, but they couldn't. And I would say, you know, you look pretty funny to me, too. It's very interesting. You know, someone's trying to be Japanese, and they're trying cultural exchange that happened without words. And then I also want to say that there's just a lot to say, but really the opportunity to be at the Tofuku-ji and Eiheiji and especially the three days at Rinzōen were really powerful. And getting to know Hoitsu Roshi in a very personal way was really amazing.

[38:52]

Thank you. Nandi, I know you're back there. learned from someone who did this, I think, in the temple. And it was very informative to watch her putting the branches into a vase, and how attentive and skillful she was, and how exacting. And it also was very moving to see

[39:57]

and he'd never sat before. Hoitsu's son? Suzuki Roshi's grandson? Yes. And Shicho Seisan, Hoitsu's wife, she had done the Ikebana all around the temple, like the temple is 500 years old, and there are flower arrangements everywhere, and that was a particularly beautiful part of the temple. Then another place that really moved me was when we were at NARA and we met the 80-year-old Abbott. And Grace, what we learned was that there were three nuns there in this beautiful complex. And I'm still wondering, well, what's going to happen? Where did it go from here? Like, there were parts of it, there were different buildings, there was a wonderful garden, there was a building where the founding empress had bathed lepers, I believe?

[41:17]

With her own hands, yeah. She bathed lepers. I just wonder what's going to happen to this tradition, and maybe the Americans can infuse it. And the other part of the trip was that traveling with people from the Berkeley Sangha and from Grayson Sangha, we certainly got to know each other better. And that was moving and touching and sometimes challenging. Thank you for everything. Thank you. Yeah, the comment that Randi is referring to is one of the places that I wandered into on my earlier trips to Japan before I had begun practicing there and it was a day when they were showing their special national treasure which is an image of Kannon Avalokiteshvara in the likeness of Empress Komyo who lived in the 8th or 9th century, so it's a national treasure and over the loudspeakers were the nuns'

[42:24]

whoa, what is this? Because it felt so completely different than every other temple I'd been to in Japan. And so this is one of the things that said, well, there were women, and what did it seem like? What did it sound like? What did it feel like to be part of their practice? So on this trip, when we went back, I was able to call the temple. And so the abbess that came out to meet us of the Kaga family was, I don't know her full name, is a relative of the emperor and all of these temples are imperial convents and in order to enter as abbess one needs to be in the emperor's family, so they are really wondering how this will continue and one of them said to me, I had the pleasure of meeting the Imperial Abbess in Kyoto as well a couple years back at the Imperial Convent Daishoji and her parents were cousins of the Meiji Emperor and she entered the convent when she was five years old and her entrance test was to sing a folk song, a Buddhist folk song, for her entry into the temple and I met her and they told me that

[43:40]

maybe some American nuns who would come over and help them to keep this temple system going. So that's also a possibility. But it is like a fading flower. And I think that's something that Dogen encountered too when he was in China, that the vigor that once had been has gone over to the other side. Richard, did you want to say something? there are places to say that

[45:29]

There are chairs. Chairs exist. Peter, do you want to say something before we end? Thank you.

[47:52]

And Mary? Thank you. And thank you for your talk this morning, because it gives a nice overview to those of us who were there that grouped it together. I think the trip was so multi-layered that it's hard to get one's arms around all of it, and it's easy to focus on the strenuous part. But there are very deep parts of it. And I knew that I loved the Japanese culture, but I didn't And I didn't expect to feel so at home. And especially, I think the peak of that experience was at Rinzow Inn. Certainly when I first came here, after I sort of fell in love with the practice, I went through this period of thinking how weird it was, and how exotic, and what are we doing doing these Japanese forms? And putting these Japanese forms in the Japanese culture made them make so much, they knitted together so much more clearly in my mind about what And coming back made this so much more meaningful.

[49:00]

It had a dimension to it that I hadn't experienced before. One example, when we were at Rinzho, two examples, when we were at Rinzho Inn, I found my hand sort of volunteering up like Dr. Strangelove to do in the service, I've never done that, I've never been trained to do it, and here I was, and Rinzo in the Lucupio is like this huge thing you stand up to do, and so I learned it there, and it was fabulous, it was the most amazing experience to feel the vibration of this drum in that hall. You feel it in your own body, it's like a heartbeat, yeah. And it felt like the friendliest place to learn that. It felt like incredible. I understood for the first time something about service and how the Do on the Kokyo and the Fukudo all are in relationship to each other.

[50:07]

It knitted together in a way that I never felt before. Yeah, I think that you describe very much how the trip helps you make that turn to enter right here. So, I'll probably wish you take mercy on our legs. There's one more thing. Melody? Well, speaking as someone who didn't go, I was thinking about all of you so much at the time, when we realized we'd been planning the election. Right. When we realized, oh no, the trip to Japan is at the same time. We thought, how are we going to Richard Pompa packing with a lot of the stalwart people who were going to Japan. Including our former Kenzo Mary. Well of course what happened is we had plenty of people came forward.

[51:08]

We had 25 people over 16 days. And it all worked out. And the whole time it was all going on. I kept feeling like what you were doing was helping us. What we were doing was helping you. You don't have to come home to Yes. Yes. And now we're all back and we all did all of that together. Yeah. Yeah. I was very much aware of your work too and very grateful to come home to a fresh start. Oh, and we got a nice donation from Grace and Peter beforehand, which is mostly encouraging. Yeah. Well, we would have liked to have done more, but we could send money at least. Yes. You want to say one more thing? Grace, one of the things that was so interesting is Oh yes, you know we had gotten the news of Darlene Cohen's diagnosis just before we left, so I promised her that at these big temples in Japan we would offer a service for her at each and every one at Angakuji

[52:17]

and at Tokeji, the Women's Temple, at Eheji, each place we did a service. And even at, what was the place, at Kiyomizu-dera. Kiyomizu-dera is a big public site and they have, you know, a big incenser and I had some incense or whatever and I stuck it in there and, you know, when nobody was looking and we gathered around and Baika was the Kokyo and we started chanting and the Japanese just gathered around us in a circle and were so grateful. You know, they usually have to pay big bucks for a service. They get a service as part of a big donation and here we were just offering our practice and everywhere we went that we did this, they loved it. They were so touched by the way we had taken this on. We did the Enmei Juku Kanon Gyo, so that's something we could memorize, and it was in Japanese, and it was really a big treat for the Japanese who saw it. They were really moved by it, so that was a bit special. Buddha's here.

[53:32]

Oh, yes. So we invite everyone to join us. We have plenty of food and we're going to have a potluck afterwards in the community room and Richard's videos of the trip we're going to show. So thank you very much. And oh wait, there's one more. We get one more. Okay, Bob. walk through mountain streams. And I would love to have mostly Sangha members come on this trek, so please let me know if you're interested. Yes, thank you. And so you'll have that and there's some other trips coming up and we're hoping to go again October-November time, so I'll put something out.

[54:45]

Thank you.

[54:46]

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