Good evening. Welcome. I've been speaking some of the last few months about the background of Japanese Buddhism even before Dogen, founder of Soto Zen, 1200 to 1253. And I want to continue this evening and actually continue speaking about Mioe. I spoke about him a week ago, Sunday, a week before yesterday, who's actually one of the most fascinating figures in the Kamakura period, the period of Dogen. He was a contemporary, but somewhat older than Dogen. 1173 to 1232 are his dates. And I'll just do a brief review of some of what I talked about a week ago. He was from the... Have any of you been to Kyoto?

[01:07]

Anyway, I'll talk some about... some of the temples there later. But he was from both the, two of the older schools. He was a monk in both the Kegon and the Shingon schools. The Kegon is the Japanese version of the Huayen school based on the Avatamsaka or Flower Ornament Sutra. And the Shingon is the Japanese Vajrayana school. the tantric school, an older version of the Tibetan Buddhist practice. Anyway, he was known as a model of, as a model devotional monk. And just to say a little bit about that, his temple is still there, Kozanji, in northwestern, in the mountains northwest of Kyoto. So there are many examples of his devotion, devotionalism.

[02:10]

There are pictures of him sitting up on a tree at Kozanji. I don't know if you can see the picture here, but he sat up in a tree, rope tree it's called. And some of the time when he wanted to do zazen, His devotion included wanting to go back to make a pilgrimage to India to see where Shakyamuni taught. I don't, there's no historical record of any. pre-modern Japanese monk or person going to India, going to China was a hard enough journey back then. There's a famous nō play by the later great nō author, Zeami, of him trying to, the legend about his trying to prepare to go to India, which he actually did twice, but he went to a shrine in Nara

[03:24]

to get advice, and the priestess there persuaded him that he didn't need to go to India, but that Shakyamuni Buddha was there in Japan, and there was this understanding that the native Japanese deities were connected to the Indian Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. One of the important things about Myohe, he represented these older Buddhist schools, from before the Kamakura period. In the Kamakura period, they thought this was the end, the final age of the Dharma, mapo is called in Japanese, when it was not possible to really practice or reach enlightenment or be enlightened, so there were the new schools of the Kamakura period, which are the main schools still of Japanese Buddhism, the Pure Land School, the Zen schools, and the Nichiren schools, the stereotype is that they tried to find single practices that were easier than all the complex combination of practices from traditional Buddhism.

[04:35]

So the Pure Land School, they chant Namo Amida Butsu in honor of Amida Buddha to try and be reborn in the Western Pure Land. Later, Nichiren Buddhism focused on chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo in honor of the Lotus Sutra. The stereotype about Zen is that Soto Zen is about just sitting Zazen, and Rinzai Zen is about koans. Of course, we know that Soto Zen includes koans, and Rinzai Zen people also do Zazen. So those stereotypes don't really hold, and we know that Dogen talked a lot about the Lotus Sutra, too. But at any rate, Myohe represented the older schools, and he was very critical, for example, of Honen, the first great Pure Land teacher who said, you don't need to do any of the other practices, just chant Nam-myoho-buddha. He was the first Pure Land teacher.

[05:39]

Miohe represented the older schools that, like the Flower Ornament Sutra School, the Kegon School, and Shingon, the Vajrayana School, which included the whole range of Mahayana Bodhisattva teachings, and saw all the teachings as skillful means, as in the Lotus Sutra, that are part of the great vehicle, Mahayana Bodhisattva idea of all different modes being part of Buddhism. But Miao Wei also tried to find ways to make these available to people, common people, in his time. They didn't really catch on, but those older schools are still there in Japan, even though they're minority schools. But you can still go to...

[06:43]

temples of those schools, Mount Koya, where the Shingon school is, and the Kegon schools like Todai-ji, the temples. And the Kegon Huayen, or flower ornament, teachings are really beautiful, and Flower Ornament Sutra is said to be the first teaching of Shakyamuni when he awakened. It's a very flowery, psychedelic text, 1600 pages in Tom Cleary's translation. People in Buddha's time couldn't understand it, they say, and so he taught the Four Noble Truths and other more basic teachings, but it's still a wonderful text and I believe that Dylan and Jason are going to be doing reading aloud from the Flower Ornament Sutra starting next month here.

[07:59]

You can ask Dylan to speak to them about when that's going to be. It's a wonderful text, a flowery text, and Nyoe was a master of that and tried to find ways to make that more available. Anyway, that's a little bit of the background. The other thing, though, about Miao Wei is that, and there's a lot more that I talked about last Sunday and it'll be on the podcast eventually, but the other thing about Miao Wei is that he kept a dream journal for close to 40 years. And that's what I want to talk about today is Miao Wei's dream journal and just the role of dreams and visions in Japanese Buddhism and in Mahayana Buddhism. So Nyoe's dream journal was rather remarkable. And there's not that much in English about Nyoe.

[09:02]

There's a few books. There's one by a Japanese Jungian analyst talking about his dream journal from a perspective of Jungian psychology. I'm going to mostly talk about this from a book by a very fine Buddhist scholar, George Tanabe, called Nyoe, the Dream Keeper, and talk about dreams and visions and what they mean in, well, in Japanese Buddhism particularly, but also in the Mahayana generally. So that's what I want to talk about tonight. Tanabe talks about this in terms of, well, the role of imagination and the role of fantasy. He talks about the fantastic and the role of fantasy and dreams and visions as important in the tradition of Mahayana Buddhism.

[10:12]

It's not how we usually think about Buddhism, I think. Most of the writings about, or a lot of the writings about Buddhism in the West and even in Asia talk more about the philosophy. But for example, well, Tsunami says, we may call this perspective that of the imagination. And he talks about how in religious teaching, how the imagination has been thought of. Imagination is not divorced from seeing and hearing, but is that which allows sensory perception to culminate in thought. It's what mediates between the senses and the mind.

[11:17]

He says some very interesting things. Fantasy and imagination are essentially the same faculty but differ only in whether the images are derived externally or generally internally. It is fantasy then creating images apart from seeing and hearing that is the source of inspiration for Buddhist sutras. And from Yohe, and traditionally in Japanese Buddhism, visions were seen in dreams, but also in meditative visions, in meditation. And some of you may have experienced this, having just visual phenomena arise. Yeah, the part I wanted to read, particularly

[12:21]

Well, you know, the dream is, he doesn't see the dream as some coded message that needs to be, that's separate from our, that comes from some part of our unconscious that has to be interpreted. The dream is, just what it is. So if Mioe didn't, in his dream journal, he has some interpretations, but he's not analyzing it in the way we think of like Freudian dream analysis. It's just, he's more interested in just being aware of the dreams, seeing the dreams, and just in having dreams and recording them. The dream is just what it is. It's not about something else. Oh yeah, here it is. And what Tanabe says is that the Buddhist tradition is as much a history of fantasy as it is a history of thought.

[13:58]

It should be studied as such in order to gain a better understanding not only of Buddhism as a fantastic philosophy, but of Buddhists as sentient beings as well. Buddhism in Asia is a treasure trove of images. So if we think of the Mahayana Sutras, the Lotus Sutra, the Flower Arrangement Sutra, all of the sutras that we might experience, they're particularly visions produced by fantasy. The primary faculty involved in that most important of Buddhist practices is meditation. The history of Buddhist fantasy is the story of a constant tension between the inner and the external worlds, a tension that arises from attempts to combine them. Many different configurations have been tried, and the records of this history accordingly reflect varying degrees of emphasis upon the inner and outer worlds, varying degrees of success in the combination of the one with the other.

[15:08]

So he talks about folk tales and myths, but really that, oh yeah. So he says, he talks about how Buddhist studies has largely been dominated by philosophical and doctrinal studies. But really, the study of images and visions and of, we could say, fantasy of these images gets more to what's actually going on for Buddhist people traditionally. So he says that Mahayana Buddhism is, among many things, it can be a tradition of the mind's faculty for producing images, both in waking life and in sleep, a tradition of fantasy-producing visions, which commentaries try to explain to further cognitive understanding and dreams, which were interpreted by the dreamers for their own meanings, and which can be, to add a modern aspect, read by us for their feelings.

[16:35]

it will be possible to gain a better understanding of Mahayana Buddhism as a vehicle not only of ideas and institutions, but of human emotions as well, only when studies of the fantastic end of the spectrum become more available. So Tanabe is arguing that the dream journal that Miaohe kept is a way of looking at the kind of images that were important in his time. And this is the period that was before, it's a little before Dogen, but it led into Dogen. And dreams are important, you know, and these images are also important for Dogen and for some of his successors. Kazon, for example, who's considered the second founder of Dogen, also had a very vivid dream life. And both for Miao Wei and later for Kazon, They actually acted on their dreams.

[17:38]

Khezan built temples based on dreams that he had and he ordained monks and nuns based on his dreams. his dreams. So I want to go into some of his dream journals. And again, they're interesting just for what they are and what they say. So I'm going to just roll. I'll read some of them. Some of them he does give interpretations very briefly. And some of them he just records. And they're interesting in interesting ways. I'll just read some of the dreams and what he says about them. So these are from Miue's dream journals. My early evening practices were over. After I left, I went to sleep and had a dream.

[18:41]

There was a place much like a field, but it was not a field. It was more like the remaining site of an old house. It was exceptionally broad, and in its four corners there were large statues of guardian lions. They moved, however, as if they were living beings. I cut off all their whiskers and so forth that were out of place. Though my fear and trembling knew no bounds, I groomed them well. This is a honest dream. There were several small pups huddled in the fur of the lion's bellies. I thought, these little puppies think of the lions as their own mothers. Both are together, and I think of both as the same thing. I thought no more of it. And then he gives this interpretation. Manjushri protects this district. The little puppies are the lords of this district. What seemed like the remains of the old house is due to there being no one in the district at this time. Then he gives further interpretation. The Sakayama house at Itono had protective mantras hanging in the four corners.

[19:48]

Later it was given to the Yuasa family that I thought both were the same thing refers to this matter. So the lion is an image of Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom. And we have Manjushri on our altar sitting on a lion down below Shakyamuni. So he has dreams about Bodhisattva figures, about Buddhas, and has dreams that are filled with Buddhist imagery. So, and he interprets it in terms of that. The next stream is about Vairochana, the Dharmakaya Buddha. And so, and I'm taking them out of order, but just giving you, there are many of them. I'm giving you a random sample. This was much later. In a dream on the night of the sixth day of the 11th month, during my early evening meditation, when I sat in meditation and wanted to practice esoteric methods, there was a very dignified, beautiful lady in a room.

[21:07]

Oh, this was in a dream. OK. So he's dreaming, and he's dreaming about meditating. was marvelously exquisite, but she showed no sign of worldly desire. I was at the same place with this noble lady. Not having any feelings for her, I ignored this noble lady. She was fond of me and did not want to be separated. I ignored her and left. She still showed no sign of worldly desire. The lady held a single mirror around which she wrapped some wire. She also held a large sword." Interpretation by Mioe. The woman was by Rochana. That is, she was certainly a queen. I was surprised about this dream of a woman and went into the meditation hall later that evening. During my meditation at that time, Assistant High Priest Songen was outside the meditation hall and he said in praise, this meditation method is the profoundest secret. It is not for those of provisional capacity and will surely allow one to attain the teaching.

[22:12]

So he had this dream of Viruchana as a queen. Viruchana is the Dharmakaya Buddha, which is in part of our chants. There are some of the dreams that are, some of his dreams, not many, but there are some that are sexual. This one isn't exactly, but he says that she was separate from worldly desire. So it's Queen Vairakshana. Again, just giving a variety of dreams. And this one I'm going to introduce a separate part of all of this. On the night of the 10th day, I dreamed that the priest, Juzo, was carrying an incense burner.

[23:29]

It was a tea bowl. I thought to myself that Sakuyama Saburo had brought this back from China and given it to Juzo. So some of these people were students of Miao Wei. Some of them are identified, some aren't. I looked at it. Inside, there were partitions with various Chinese objects in it. There were more than 20 kinds in it. There was something in the shape of two turtles mating, and I thought that it was a worldly congratulatory gift. Inside, there was a Chinese female doll about six inches tall. This was also like a t-ball. Someone said, this doll is very upset about being sent from China. Again, this is all in a dream. Someone said, thereupon I asked, is it true that you are upset about coming to this country? She nodded in reply. Again, I asked, I feel for you. Do not grieve. Then she shook her head. After a while, I picked her up. and looked at her. Tears were streaming down as she wept.

[24:33]

Her eyes were filled with tears, and her shoulders were soaked. She was sad for having come to Japan. Then she uttered some words and said, if you are my prison keeper, then it will be of no use. I replied, I am only called a priest. And that being the case, there is nothing to be concerned about. The great sages in this country think considerably of me. Everyone respects me. Therefore, I can feel for you. When the doll heard this, she flushed with great joy, nodded, and said, if that is so, then you can feel for me. I held her in my palms. Suddenly, she turned into a living woman. Then I thought to myself, tomorrow I must go somewhere for a service. I want to go there to establish a spiritual connection. with someone there. He must be with me there." The woman was happy and wanted to accompany me. I said, there was a lady there who has some connection with you. I was thinking of the Sakiyama nun who was living there. We will go there in order to hear her because she is Saburo's mother.

[25:38]

I thought, of this because the doll was sent by Saburo. Thus, we went to that place together. Juzo was there and said, this woman consorts with snakes. I heard his words, but I knew that she did not have sexual relations with snakes. It is just that this woman also has the body of a snake. As I was thinking about this, Juzo followed up and said, this woman doubles up as a snake. And that's the end of the dream. So you know, there's some pretty weird dreams in here. But then interpretation. Mioe says, this was Zenmyo. Zenmyo was a dragon person and had a snake's body. The teapot represents her body of stone. OK, so I have to explain who Zenmyo was. And this gets into a whole other story and a whole kind of side. interesting sidebar that also relates to an aspect of this period.

[26:42]

So there's a picture of Zenmyo in the book. Let me find that. Zenmyo is based on a story from China. It's a fairly famous story of a a woman who became infatuated with a monk. And the story goes that she, and this is a story from China, she fell in love with a Korean monk and transformed herself into a dragon to transport him across the sea back to Korea. So later she changed into a rock, hovering over evil monks to chase them out of the place. Anyway, so and then his temple became the Temple of the Floating Rock. So there's all these folk stories that are part of all of this.

[27:43]

But this thing about Zemlyo is interesting because later on, this has to do with Mioe's relationship to protecting war widows. So this is a little bit of a side issue. But during the period that Mioe lived, in 1185, there was a great civil war in Japan. Two of the feudal families It's a very famous civil war, and in that war, One of the families won, and they overthrew the regular government that was in Kyoto and established a new government in Kamakura.

[28:45]

And it was a samurai government, and that's the beginning of the Kamakura period. There was another war, a briefer war, a kind of disturbance also between an emperor who tried to regain power from the samurai government and this was in, and there will not be a test on all this, but this was much later in 1223, I think. But as a result of this, Myoe established a temple which he dedicated to Zenmyo, Shanmyo in Chinese. Zenmyo is the Japanese name for this figure, who became a protector figure. So she's based on the story of this woman in China.

[29:46]

This is the statue of this figure, Zenmyo, who became a Bodhisattva protector figure. and was the statue that was enshrined at this temple that Myōe established near his temple for war widows, widows from the Civil War and widows from this later civil disturbance. protecting widows from this war. So like in our time, there were feudal warlords who were fighting in the starting wars. And Nyoe was trying to protect them. As a sidelight, also part of the background of this period, this statue was made by Tankei. And during this period, the, Tonke is, I want to mention because he was the son of Unke, that many of the temples were associated with these feudal warlords, and during these civil wars, many of the temples were burned down.

[31:03]

because they were affiliated. There was a whole part of the history of this period is that some of the aristocrats became monks and then they were associated with and affiliated with temples and then they got involved in these wars. Tanke is the great sculptor who was one of the sons of the of Unkei, who's considered the Japanese Michelangelo, but Tonkei was responsible for Sanju Sangendo, a fantastic temple in Kyoto that has a thousand kanons. So I'm going to pass this book around. It's an amazing place where there's just this amazing, very, very long, long hall of kanon statues. and the central statue, and Tonke arranged this.

[32:05]

So he built the Zenmyo statue that Nyoe used as the main statue for this temple he built for war widows. So this is a statue of Kanon, Kanzeon, who he chanted to. With a thousand arms and with many... various skillful means, various implements of skillful means in each of the hands. So you can see this in one of the other images. So I'll pass this around. You can look at it. Pass it. But this was another aspect of this period. Contemporary with Mioe were these great, great Buddhist statues that were that were built, statues of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas like Kannon, and also great guardian or protector figures.

[33:11]

Some of them are in front of these statues. Yes? Are all those 1,000-armed Kannons, do they also have 11 heads? Yes. Yeah, and you can see that in the... The story, there's various stories, but one of the stories is that Kanon, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, pictured in the back of there above Mike, that's an image of Kanon by Dogen. Yeah, and there's an image, it's harder to see, you have to go up and look at it closely over there, but with 11 heads. The story is that Kanon, sorry, we're going a little over time, but Kanon, freed all the beings in the hell realms and then looked back and the hell realms were being filled up again and her head broke open with grief. And this happened 11 times until finally there's a head of Amida Buddha on top.

[34:13]

There's actually 1,000 arms kind of on statue on the Doge's settlement altar. So you can see that there. Go in and look if you want. Anyway, I just wanted to mention all these amazing sculptures that were built. Because of the temples being burnt down, they commissioned all these statues at the same time. I'll also pass around this image of Unkei, who was the father of Tonkei. This is a self-portrait statue of Unkei, who was considered the Japanese Michelangelo. And a number of his sons, along with Tankei, are brilliant sculptors themselves. But this is a self-portrait statue of Unkei, whose work I love. And this is a Jizo that Unkei made. I'll pass it this way. One of my favorite Buddhist statues. Anyway, I wanted to just mention that because of all these warlords and this and the stuff that was going on during Nyoe's life, there's these brilliant sculptures.

[35:24]

But I wanted to say just a little bit more about some of these dreams. I just wanted to share some of these other dreams of Nyoe, and there's a whole bunch more. So again, there are many, many of these dreams in this journal. And his interpretations aren't like, you know. modern psychological interpretations, but just references to Buddhist context. Many of them are of Buddhist figures. For example, here's one about Kannon. In a dream on the night of the third day of the 10th month, a wooden statue of Fuku Kenjaku Kanon, a particular Kanon, transformed itself into a living being. It gave me a small scroll of the larger Prasanna Paramita Sutra. I raised it to my head according to the ritual and wept tears of joy."

[36:27]

So that's one dream that he recorded. Another dream that is one I read last week, but it's, Another rather fantastic dream. In a dream on the 23rd night of the same, there was a large boulder with a flat surface like that of a board. Slightly below the top was an outcropping. I thought that the top surface of the boulder would be a good place to be. On the outcropping, a unicorn had stopped there to play. Because of this, I thought I should also be there. The matter of this unicorn stopping to play was unclear previously. How in the world could such a spirit animal come to this place? After reflecting on this, oh, this isn't a dream, I received an indication and clearly understood this matter. I decided that it was so utterly amazing. I wondered whether that indication was the same as sweet water, but I could not clearly distinguish them.

[37:34]

I awoke. So he has dreams like that. Just a few more, just to give you an idea. I put this letter into the court robes being worn by someone watching this. Inside the letter, I sent an exquisite artificial flower wreath, quite without compare, but of ordinary size. I felt happy about what I was doing. The flower wreath was about two and a half inches. Twigs and leaves were also combined in it. This means they will receive a flower basket." Okay. I think there was another one I meant to read. Well, okay. Oh no. And just a few more that are sort of close together. Here.

[38:39]

The holy priest Mongaku, who was one of Nyoe's teachers, gave me a marvelous wonder drug and said, I am offering this especially to you. Though others have asked for it, I have kept it and not given it away. And he gave it to me, and I wondered if it might be a kind of medicine of immortality. So I ate it and wondered if it might be a medicine for longevity. I woke up chomping and chewing. During this time, I prayed a lot for the spread of the Dharma." So a couple more. From the 13th day, I began to recite the shorter Horokaku mantra 10,000 times. On the 14th day of the same, I saw a splendid house that appeared like an illusion. I lifted up the bamboo screen and saw a beautiful girl, about 15 or 16 years old, dressed in white, hanging up something. She looked at me. Another one.

[39:40]

In a dream on the night of the 16th day, I was carrying two buckets of sugar. I told someone, I lost one bucket of sugar that I had previously. Now I have two buckets of sugar arising out of a mutual response. During this time, my mind has been unsettled for not being in accord with the world. Consequently, there are matters like this that have not come to fruition. Nevertheless, as the arising of the sugar bucket out of a mutual response indicates there will be a complete attainment. So he has dreams like that. Part of this is just to show the kind of world which existed in Japanese Buddhism just before Dogen or around Dogen's time. And part of it is that there are all these figures, bodhisattva figures, protector figures, many different Buddhas that are just part of this world.

[40:44]

So, anyway, I wanted to give you a taste of all of that. And a little bit over time, but comments, questions, responses? Okay, good. In what way? Say more. Okay. I don't know. I thought it was interesting. Well, there's also dream practices, practicing in dreams. And in Tibetan Buddhism, they do that.

[41:47]

And in some other shamanic traditions, they do that. But Myohe, actually, he wasn't trying to figure out his dreams. He wasn't trying to figure out what they were about. He just enjoyed them, and he wrote them all down. And for Jungian analysts, for example, who think a lot about dreams, and various other psychologists, too, he's the first great dream journalist, historically, in any culture. So it's kind of interesting. But the dreams were part of, Dreams were significant and were part of the world of Japanese Buddhism. Yes, Ed? I know a little bit about Jung, and maybe some other people here know more, but he did, he was interested in Taoism, he was interested in Buddhism, he studied some of this, but I don't know that he ever knew about Miao, there wasn't that much in Western languages about Eastern thought then, there was some, so he was interested in that.

[43:00]

Thanks. I don't know, I just know it is. It's actually what brought me to Buddhism in a lot of ways. I had the opportunity to spend a few months in Kyoto and Nara when I was 20 and just was blown away by it. That's just a small sample. But especially Unkei and his sons, who were all great sculptors, but also further back in earlier periods. Japanese Buddhist statuary is, you know, the powerful images. Also the images of the protector figures, the wrathful figures are very powerful. But the Bodhisattvas, very sublime, the Buddhas. So it's part of how In times when the general populace wasn't literate in terms of reading texts, a lot of Buddhism was conveyed through imagery, through pictures.

[44:25]

There were scrolls and pictures of the stories in the Lotus Sutra, for example. But there were pictures of and statues of these Buddhism bodhisattva figures. And that was very much how Buddhism became popular in those cultures. And yeah, they're very powerful. Yes, Alex. How do we distinguish between fantasy and delusion? Is there a distinction between them? Well, yeah. Tanabe goes into that. Fantasy is just what comes from the imagery that comes out. Delusion, you know, as a pejorative term, meaning, you know, fantasy that's a distraction from reality, whatever that is. And, you know, we can't see people who are

[45:27]

disturbed and cause harm because of delusion, or cause harm to themselves because of delusions. But what this is talking about is imagery, and images, and imagination. And often that's thought of as delusory, but what this is, what Tanabe is pointing out, and I think rightly so, is that the Buddha's sutras are filled with images. People looking at the Flower Ornament Sutra, for example, I know Hoketsu has studied it, as I have. There are all these amazing, fantastic images. And for some people, they're not so interesting. But if you just give yourself to the images, they can be very inspiring. It's not that you, you know, it's not good or bad. So the idea of skillful means, it's in the Lotus Sutra, is that there are various different ways of conveying approaches to awakening.

[46:42]

That's what this is about, bodhisattva idea. What works in terms of freeing people from harmful delusion? What helps people to awaken? Yeah, awakening is a word we use instead of that word enlightenment, which is a really distorted, illusory word in some ways, because it makes you think that enlightenment's a thing, you know, that you can get. But awakening is just the, you know, being aware and being kind and being, you know, open. But what was your question again? Reason has its place, even linear Western logical reason.

[48:06]

I don't mean to use the word Western in a pejorative way, but reasoning is used in Buddhism too. It can be used as a positive help. But the point is that whatever helps is worthwhile. I'm saying that there's something else. War, or hatred, or other things. And that requires imaginations to dream the dream of the future.

[49:10]

Yeah. Tanabe also makes the point that sutras, as compared to Judeo-Christian scriptures, do not pretend to be historical records. You know, there's, you know, the Judeo-Christian scriptures, you know, Moses, Jesus, these were, are supposedly historical beings, and maybe so, of course, but the, you know, the Flower Ornament Sutra, there are all these wonderful, they're not imaginary in a negative way, but they're, these figures that are, the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, they're not, Shakyamuni Buddha is based on a historical person. But then there are all these other Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and they exist, but it's not like trying to pin down some historical record. It's true as something that can be celebrated and

[50:12]

are not imaginary in a negative way. Anyway, he talks about that. So, you know, and then there's also just, oh yeah, the Buddha was a human being and he awakened. So, but this is, but Myo-e and his dreamscapes and this world of all these figures is, kind of the world that Dogen came out of. And it's part of our practice still. And we don't have to, you know, it's one part of our practice. And that's why I'm talking about this. It's not the whole thing necessarily. Yes. Right.

[51:27]

Sure. Yeah, and part of the point is that there's not this stark separation of in medieval Japanese Buddhist thought, to put it that way. There's not this stark separation between dream awareness and so-called conscious awareness, awake awareness. It's part of a gradation of consciousness. So it's not like, yeah. social conditioning toward that vision of harmony.

[52:58]

So yeah, I've always been really, and I think that's why I love the fatherhood suture so much, is I love the psychedelic vision and imagery. Yes. Oh, I think we always need to think that.

[54:14]

We always need to feel like, you know, oh, this is perennial in Asian culture. If only we were back with the ancients. This is totally, you know, this is a totally pervasive trope in Asian culture. The ancient ones were, you know, great and, you know, were just a, you know, if only Suzuki Roshi were here, you know. But I think there's something really worthwhile about feeling that. This is what pushes us to practice more fully, practice more intensely. So yeah, I think we, in Buddhism, it's about always feeling that. And we chant, we haven't done it in a while, but we sometimes chant the names of the ancestors. We look back, in our dedication, we look back at the ancestors. our first woman ancestor, our first ancestor in China, our first ancestor in Japan.

[55:19]

So to think of the ancestral teachers is to recognize that there's something back there that we are emulate that we want to emulate. But I also feel like we should look to the ancestors of the future and let them inspire us as well. So that doesn't mean that we are unworthy, it just means that we aspire. So it's a good question. I mean, at the end, it was like, I don't think the Indians were such ancestor freaks as the Asians. And Buddha was like, look, find your own way.

[56:22]

Yeah, there's that, too. No, let's keep a big record of me and keep venerating me. Yeah, that's the other side. It's always right here. We got it. It's here. We just got to do it. Yeah, that's true. In America now, all of Asian Buddhism is available. Good teachers from those Asian traditions and their Western disciples are around. You can go and check them out. Yeah. So yeah, there's that side too. That's right. Thank you. Yes, Caitlin. I have seen, I think, the artwork of Moet on a tree elsewhere. Of what?

[57:23]

Moet. Yeah. Yeah, him sitting in the tree. I could pass around this book too, but yeah, he sat up in a tree. I mean, he did that. I saw the tree where he sat up. Kyoto was protected by, I forget the name of the guy, he was Langdon Warner, had been in Japan and he persuaded the American Air Force not to bomb Kyoto. Or Nara. Yeah, a cultural site, a historical cultural site. Yeah, which now our administration is threatening to destroy those in the Mideast.

[58:28]

They're a great cult. Excuse me? Like what? Yeah, there are great cultural sites, historical cultural sites all over the world. And in terms of Western culture, it started in Mesopotamia and Persia and yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That's where our culture came from. So on that note, Let's close with the four Bodhisattva vows, which we chant three times.

[59:14]

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