I should only be for expounding the Dharma, I think, and I'm not going to expound the Dharma. I'll just answer some questions, if any of you have any questions about what I was doing in Japan the last year. First, though, let me say something about, just a little bit about why I went there. I went to try to study Buddhism, right? And I felt, if I'm going to try to study Buddhism there, I have to find out first how to study Buddhism there. So if I try to find out how to study Buddhism there, I'm really in the process of finding out how you or anyone can study Buddhism there.

[01:03]

So more than just trying to study Buddhism myself, I've been trying to also find out how myself or others can study Buddhism there. And in order to… Also I feel some need to have a continuing, personally, some need to have a continuing relationship with the Buddhist world in Japan, and perhaps in China and India too, but certainly in Japan. So also, simultaneously, the other side of that is, I'm trying to find out what kind of relationship Buddhism here in America should have to Japan. And third, in order to do either of these two things, I knew before I went and found

[02:07]

to be very true, I have to find out, we have to find out something about what the culture of Japan is. Because I would say, let's see, in the last fifteen years, say, since the war, roughly, roughly, maybe a thousand or two thousand or more people have fairly seriously gone to Japan to study Buddhism, and it may be much more than that. I know of myself at least a few hundred who I've seen in the last years, ten years, come past Zen Center, and in the year I've been in Japan I've seen an awful lot of people who come to study Buddhism. And out of all of these people who come, statistically no one has made a success of it.

[03:11]

Actually a few have, but statistically the percentage is nearly zero. Maybe four or five or six or seven people have made anything like a success of studying Buddhism there, able to stay several years and actually get into a practice. And most of the reason, the reason most of them have not been able to is, usually the reason they give and the reason I perceive is, they have difficulties with the culture. So, the first thing I've done this year is try to find out as much as I can about Japanese culture. Okay, now if you want to ask some questions. You had one. I was going to ask you what influenced you to study in Rinzai Monastery, is this correct or not? I'm not, this last year I haven't been studying in any monastery. I've visited a number of monasteries, I've attended lectures at both Daitoku-ji and Shokoku-ji,

[04:15]

which is, they're both Rinzai, but of course I can't understand a word of the lectures. They're in, they're called Teishos and they're in a kind of Chauserian Japanese, which you can't, like Gary Snyder is a friend of mine, who was in Japan 12 years, said it took him about five years of being in Japan and he'd been studying Chinese and Japanese for three years before he went. It was about five years of living in Japan after that before he was able to understand the Teishos, feel comfortable and understand the Teishos, because they're given, and even for Japanese people it takes maybe a year to get on to the kind of Japanese that's used, at least in Rinzai, and I don't know if the lectures in Soto are given in quite such a difficult style. Mostly I concentrated on studying Japanese and doing various things which have to do

[05:24]

with trying to find out about Japan this year, while next year I'll probably be in a monastery. Okay? Yeah? How do you approach entering the monastery? They call it Soto? Yeah. Can you only stay something like eight months on your passport? And then you have to make other arrangements to stay longer or something? Can you stay like a year or two here? Yeah, most of your information is incorrect, but you can get a visa to go to Japan, a tourist visa, for three months, which you can extend, I think, three or four times, and a lot of people come and they keep extending it. The difficulty with doing that is, if you do do that, to get a longer visa, say you decide you want to stay a year or more, it's difficult to switch from a tourist visa to

[06:28]

a longer stay visa. So the best thing to do if you plan to stay for a long time is to try to get a longer visa before you go. But I feel there's some advantage in going to the Orient rather like a tourist. I don't mean an ordinary tourist, but in the sense that you don't have a specific plan. It may be best to go and look around in Japan and maybe India or whatever, and not decide, I'm from here in America, I'm going to this or that particular place, particularly if you haven't been around and thought about going and planned going for several years. If it's just an idea you've had in your mind off and on for a year or two, it's better to go and maybe go on a tourist visa and look around. And then, if there's some place you should study, you'll stay. You'll get to a certain place and you'll say, geez, I'm going to postpone.

[07:30]

I was going to leave next week and I think I'll stay another week and I'll stay another week. And pretty soon you find yourself involved in a situation which you've chosen in a deeper way than just from here deciding, well, I guess I'll go to America. How you get into a Sodo. The most important thing to know, first of all, I think, is Japanese people tend to expect that people, other people, to make their decisions before they make their decisions. So when you make a decision, you stick to it. And we have a tendency to say, well, I'll go to Japan and go into a monastery and I'll see how I feel and if I don't like it after a few months I'll leave, something like that. That's a very bad thing to do in Japan. This is perhaps overly stated, but there's a kind of truth in this.

[08:33]

If you go to a Japanese monastery and you say, I'm very serious and I want to be admitted and please admit me, and they say, okay, you can come and study here. How long? And you say, I'm going to stay one year. And you try to stay one year and at the end of six months for some reason your mother dies or you get a disease or something or you just don't want to stay any longer. After six months you decide to leave. This may be too strong to say, but we have this feeling, living in Japan, you'll be considered a failure if you leave. But if you went and you said, I'm only going to stay three months, and then you stayed six months, you'd be considered a great success because you would have followed through in what you do. And Myoshinji, which is the largest Rinzai head temple, does not take any Caucasian students at all now.

[09:34]

And the reason everyone gives is that some, they never wanted to, and finally some boy who was one of the most serious Americans who's ever gone to study Zen there, finally got permission to enter Myoshinji. And when he did, he only stayed a few months. And because of that, they've decided to never accept another American, because they, Americans don't keep their promise or follow through or something, they're not serious or something like that. So if you do go, the best thing seems to be, is to not tell people you plan to do this and plan to do that, because whatever you say, you sort of be held to it. I mean, I found, after I arrived, somebody came to visit me and said, well, you've told people you're going to spend the first year in Sojiji and the second year in Eheji, and we've made the arrangements for you. And I said, well, I didn't do it, you know, I tried to, I don't know how it happened,

[10:36]

but I said, there's a possibility I may go to Eheji, and there's a possibility. But already that became a definite plan, which I was expected to follow through on. So it's best to not have any plans until you have a definite one, and when you have a definite one, to probably state the minimum amount of time they'll accept you for. In other words, most training places won't accept, well, a monastery like Eheji, I don't think would, particularly unless you come on like, I'm an American and want special privileges, which they may allow you to stay a month or so, but I don't think they like to accept you for less than three months. So at a Soto monastery, I think it's best to agree to stay at least three months, and then, and stick out those three months, because your behavior affects the possibility of anybody else who's studying in Japan. And then the second, and then if after three months you want to stay, you say, I've decided

[11:37]

to stay another three months, then everybody feels very good about you, because Eheji, obviously you like it and want to stay, you know, but if you say you're going to stay six months and then leave, they'll think something's wrong, you see, so it's best to make your plans in that way. In a Rinzai Soto, without a great deal of difficulty, Daito-koji is the only place which will fairly easily accept Americans. It's easy to find a group to sit with that just meets a couple times a week, like at Ruth Fuller Sasaki's place, which is now in a kind of up-in-the-air state. They have meditation once or twice a week, and I don't quite know who goes, it's mostly

[12:38]

for people who are passing through. If you want to study seriously for a long period of time at Daito-koji, you have to get permission, but you usually can get permission if you convince them you're serious enough. And then you'll sit in an outside ante-room-like area where I think the lectures are given, and then if you're around enough and they get a good feeling about you, they'll invite you to take Sanzen, perhaps. And you can sometimes start Sanzen with knowing not very much Japanese because they may give you only one koan for the first year or two, you know, so you can work on that koan for a year, and it's only four or five words in Japanese, so you can figure those out. And so it doesn't require too much Japanese, you have to keep going back there and having a confrontation with them every morning about 4.30, I think, a.m. And eventually, I think, if they get a good feeling about you, then they'll invite you

[13:41]

to sit with the monks. And I don't think in Rinzai you have to wear robes to sit with the monks. And also, well, and I think now they might even permit women to sit with the monks. I know they've invited Irmgard Schlegel, who's been there nine years studying, to sit with the monks, but she sits outside by her own choice. In Eheiji, I think you have to sit with the monks, you have to also be a monk. So there's some difference there. Rinzai, Daitokuji, if you're there for a while and they get a good feeling about you, they'll invite you to sit with the monks. But that would be with the expectation that you'd be around for six months or a year or something, and they won't really take you really seriously as a student unless you can make a 10-year commitment, something like that. Okay? Yeah?

[14:44]

As far as I know, there's no Koreans or Chinese at all, or Indian people. There are, of course, Korean, many Korean, Chinese, and Indian people living in Japan, but none of them studying Buddhism. There are some Europeans. There's one English-German woman, there's a young German man, and, oh, there's another German lady, and there are, oh, there's an English boy, and then maybe ten Americans who have been there long enough, say, a few months, so that you begin to know who they are. But most of the, I would guess that I probably know more of the Americans and students, European and Americans and students in Japan now than anybody else, because most of the, just like here in the States, partly, but mostly like the Kamakura group, they never leave Kamakura,

[15:54]

and they don't know really who's in Kyoto, and the Kyoto Rinzai people, they don't have anything to do with Soto or the Kamakura Yasutani people. And there aren't, and the Soto people don't have much to do, so no one knows what's going on much. And for some reason, I met or visited with most of the American study and European study in Japan. How are the finances for the Americans living in the monasteries being received? I think a heiji makes a small charge of a dollar to a day or a month or five dollars a month or something, some amount. I don't think daitoku-ji makes any charge, but you'd be expected to contribute something. Of course, your robes would cost something. The minimum cotton robes with the other things that you need, which would be warm enough,

[16:59]

because Japan isn't so cold outside, but it's very cold inside, because they don't heat anything. And so, I guess your robes would cost you, I don't think you could, well, it'd be at least a hundred and fifty dollars, I think, to have enough for all year round in the different seasons. Living in a monastery, of course, is quite inexpensive. Living outside a monastery is quite expensive. Yeah? Oh, yes, I live right near it, near it. And taiji has, well, I'll tell you where I live, in Kyoto, Kyoto is in a kind of horseshoe

[18:03]

of mountains, which makes it very hot and muggy in the summer, because there's not much breeze. And my house is in the upper northwestern corner, north of Daitoku-ji, about ten minutes' walk. And it's an area which up to, about three years ago, was entirely farm, but now it's about forty percent farm and sixty percent city. And up the hill from me, about ten minutes' walk, is anti-ji. And at present, there are more Americans studying anti-ji than any other place in Japan, I think. The main reason is because of the writing about the wind bell. And taiji also has quite a large number, in a sense, large number, for Japan, monks studying

[19:05]

there. They have maybe six. And except for ehe-ji and so-ji-ji, the number of monks studying in monasteries is small, like in Kyoto, which is mostly Rinzai. Soto is primarily in the northern part of Japan. The Rinzai sect is divided, it has about six thousand temples altogether, I think, and Soto has about fifteen thousand temples. So they have to train priests for these fifteen thousand, six thousand temples. And Rinzai is divided into primarily five major schools, and those five major divisions each have a head temple in Kyoto, and each train monks for the monasteries, for the temples under them. And each complex is large, I mean it's a big head temple, a big training part, and many

[20:16]

sub-temples, making it like a kind of Golden Gate Park with temples, and it's divided up into little sections, each one. And in each one of those, like in Daitoku-ji, I would guess there's maybe eight monks studying. In Shokoku-ji there's about six or something, and two years ago there were only two, Dana Fraser, whom some of you have met, American, and one Japanese. Myoshin-ji probably got more, and the others have less. So altogether maybe there's thirty or so Rinzai monks in training. Well, that's certainly less than we have here in San Francisco. It's a different kind of commitment, of course, but it's quite small. I don't see how they keep their temples filled with people. Of course, there are abandoned temples, in fact, a very beautiful temple that's abandoned is Katagiri-sensei's temple, which I went and visited. And it's in the mountains, well, in Tsuruga Peninsula, and it overlooks the ocean and has

[21:24]

beautiful rice fields behind it, terrace, and I went in and chanted and offered incense. I forgot to tell you, and we took photographs, which I have, I'll show you. It's very, very… I asked people, Katagiri-sensei no otera doko desu ka? They said, Katagiri, America, ikimasen. I tried to convince them, I knew you were in America. But, Uchiyama Roshi has attracted quite a lot of young Japanese monks, considering it's not a training temple or anything, just an individual, and I'm told the reason is he wrote an autobiography, which is published in Japanese, but not in English, in which he confesses, it's a rather confessional-type book, of his problems and difficulties which led him, in his twenties, into studying Zen and how it's helped him.

[22:26]

And I guess this book has some impact on people, a fresh kind of impact, and a number of quite interesting young monks have come to study with him. And his way of practice there is, I would say, a kind of antidote to Japanese Buddhism. I mean, in other words, he doesn't chant at all, practically. There's no kyo-saku, no carrying the stick, it's just sitting and just mostly sashin. And for many young Japanese monks, this seems more focused on Zazen and more focused on what Buddhism really is, and so is attractive to them. The reasons for the Americans going there are a little different, because they've come not knowing anything about it, except that Graham mentioned it in the wind bell when he talked. So Uchiyama Roshi seems to be rather well respected, and a number of people send students

[23:31]

to him, too. Americans who've been there have stayed longer than they have at other places, and Uchiyama Roshi permits a rather...well, it's a very...the atmosphere is very tight, maybe, in a way. Not exactly strict, but something like that. But at the same time, he permits people to come in and out during Zazen periods. You can come to a sashin, part of a sashin, he doesn't care how you dress, things like that. That makes it much easier for Americans who want to live as laymen and study. So because of this, a number of the Rinzai teachers in the area also send people to Shukoku-ji. In other words, an American comes and says, here I am, my life dream has been to study Buddhism, what do you do with me? They say, go to Antai-ji. Yeah?

[24:33]

I've heard that there is a rumor that a Japanese monk has heard about the Zen in America, and I want to come here. Where have you heard the rumors? Everybody...well, most people in the Japanese Buddhist world know about Zen Center and Tassahara. They know that some kind of Zen exists in America. Mostly they...I would guess, you see, except for monk training, most of the statistics that you see, somebody will say, five hundred people come to such and such a temple to study

[25:39]

Zen. Well, mostly those are college students on weekends, or businessmen, or the company president says you should all practice Zazen because you'll be better employees or something. And so they go to monasteries to do that, you know, and they stay a couple weeks, I mean they stay a couple days, and they sweep a bit, you know, and practice and things, and it may be some benefit. I would guess that most of the Japanese in Japan, though you could...Katagiri-sensei or Suzuki-roshi could answer this better than I, think that maybe Buddhism in America is a sort of lay-type thing like that, in which there aren't really serious students. But Tassahara has changed that, because they know there's something which somebody calls a monastery in America, they don't understand why women are allowed in it, and they think, can it really be taken seriously, you know. And when I first went there was some testing of me, you know, like, are you really, are

[26:44]

you any good, you know? And I wanted to minimize that kind of attitude toward me a lot, because I didn't want the reputation of Tassahara to rest on me. So I said, Zen, oh, I'm rather interested in Zen, but, you know, I don't know if I like it too much. So people thought, isn't that strange, why? Well, that gave me some kind of freedom, you know, to sort of look around without everybody sort of saying, is he an American priest or something. So, anyway, does that answer your question, rather? I think the interest in, by Japanese priests in America is at a point now where it can

[27:58]

go, you know, either way. Probably more interest in America. At present, they realize, or they have the feeling that Tassahara represents something, something that they don't quite understand, which they must take more seriously than anything that's happened before. They're involved in, well, tradition is, of course, very strong in Japan. I mean, the whole way of conceiving of existence and experiencing, organizing your perceptions reinforces the things that stick up out of the surface of the culture, like tradition. And so there's a kind of importance to tradition beyond anything that we can understand easily.

[29:03]

I mean, they don't, the Japanese language, for example, doesn't really even have a kind of future tense in our sense. So the whole idea of past is very important. I mean, sometimes I feel, well, while we're driving a car, you know, we have a little tiny rear-view mirror and a big windshield, and Oriental culture has a huge rear-view mirror and a little windshield. So they can see enough, but they're always looking into the past, too, you know, because the ideal was in the past, and our ideal is new, you know, something new is good. So with such a strong emphasis on tradition, and with temples and buildings, I mean, you'll be in a temple and they'll say, this temple's burned down eight times, the last time in the 16th century, you know, so things are very old, you know, and even the little temple

[30:05]

next to where I live has had 21 oshos, 20, he's the man who's head of it now, who's the grandfather of my daughter's playmate, is the 21st head of that Jodo temple. Well, if you start counting, 21, that goes back quite a few hundred years. So if you talk to somebody from Daitoku-ji, for instance, which is a venerable and ancient institution, I mean, it's very difficult for them to take anything that's only two or three years old, or American Buddhism, which is 70 years old, seriously at all, you know. It just doesn't, they think, oh well, there's some baby over there, trying, and they should come here and learn, which is true. But on the other hand, Japanese Buddhism is at a stage now where I think, again, I don't

[31:05]

know enough Japanese to be sure, but some of the younger, more intelligent monks, and I did go and talk at their Rinzai University, and I talked to the students, and when I began, and I said various things, and it was translated, and everybody knows a little English, and when I said, I watched what kind of reactions I got, and when I talked, I said something like this, in the past, Zen Master designed tea gardens, right, you know, there's no reason why a Zen Master today maybe shouldn't design a movie, you know, and this, what I would guess were the brighter students thought this was a great idea. And the man who was translating didn't want to translate it. I said, you must translate. And I also made

[32:14]

some comments about tradition and Master-Disciple relationship and hierarchy, which I had difficulty getting translated. But when they were translated, the students picked up on them immediately, and immediately turned it partly into politics, because there's enormous political ferment in young people in Japan. And later these students went out, no connection with my talking, but about a week or two after I was there, they went into a kind of rebellion against the Rinzai sect in a small way, and said, we should bring Zazen to the ordinary person, and it shouldn't be so elite, because the criticism of young, these young people studying to be priests in the Rinzai sect were that Zen is too elite. And that's a, I think, for

[33:17]

me too, a legitimate kind of criticism of Zen. So they went out and they meditated all day in the rain on the street in a corner in Kyoto, which I found rather Mizurashi. Mizurashi means that's wonderful, and Mizu is the word for water. So I put them together. Because I don't know much Japanese, all I can do is make compounds like that. The point I'm trying to make is that I think there are young students in the colleges now who are in the midst of some of the same kind of change which is going on here, and who legitimately want to be Buddhists. And for the most part they reject Buddhism, but who legitimately want to be Buddhists. And they're going to, that's one reason, and it's some of these type of young men who are

[34:17]

attracted to Uchiyama Roshi, because he seems to take a little different tack approach than traditional Buddhism. And more of these young men are going to want to go into Buddhism and want to go into it with some sense of making it more workable, or keeping the same deep and old tradition, but somehow at the same time being more flexible or experimental or something like that. I don't know quite what words to use. I feel that they will feel this way, and I already know that some do. And when they do, and they see that we're involved in the same kind of effort to try to find out how to make a life in a Buddhist practice here, then there's going to be a great interest and curiosity about what we've done. And it'll be quite easy, I think, at that time to get Japanese priests to come over here for six months or one year or two years to improve their English and to learn

[35:17]

what we're doing and go back to Japan. And of course some will stay, if we want. Okay, that answers your question. Do these young Buddhists also have an interest in tradition? Have what? Have an interest in tradition that they always do. Well, on the surface, this is a little like saying, well, speaking about all young Americans as if all young Americans were hippies. You can't exactly do that. But certainly the hippie

[36:18]

or psychedelic style, to some extent, influences all young Americans, or is rejected by them. And in Japan, the more radical approach to things, radical political approach and radical attitude toward society, to some extent, affects all the young Japanese people, young Japanese. And one of the big aspects of this is anti-tradition, anti-seniority system, anti-establishment, in a rather different way than here. But on the whole, despite this, the basic way they organize experience and experience things is still one in which tradition will come to the fore. I mean, a kind of example of that is, a friend of mine was a teacher at Kyodai, Todai, which

[37:22]

is Tokyo University. And he was one of the group of professors which were supporting the students. He was Caucasian, but all the other professors were Japanese. And they were supposed to be meeting to figure out how to help the students. And all they meant about, for one year of meetings, was how to save face for helping the students. Now, this is like supporting the establishment with one hand and attacking it with the other. Basically they're attacking the establishment and then saying, but we have to behave by establishment rules in order to attack. It's the same way young Japanese girls often criticize Japanese men as not being attentive and helping and going out in the evening without them and things like that. But then when she has a baby, she brings up that boy to be just that kind of man who she

[38:24]

complains about. So there's a kind of, it's not easy to say, yes, they do or don't respect tradition. It's quite complicated. I think anybody with any intelligence would realize that the, what is it, almost 2,500-year-old Buddhist tradition is essential to keep the essence of. Yeah? How much fluency in Japanese would be necessary for a human of state? Would it just come everyday? Would it need to be sufficient to express in Japanese or do you need to be able to? Well, first of all, the question is how difficult is it to get that much fluency? I've had about

[39:37]

as much French as I've had, I've studied French about as much as I've studied Japanese. I can read French. I could go to France and within, I'm sure, months I could do nearly everything that's needed. And within two months I could probably have conversations with people about things other than the time of day and where's the taxi stand. In Japan, if you went to Japan without any language at all, it would take you two or three months of studying, quite a lot, to get so that you could function, to get to find addresses, downtown, where the stores are, give taxi drivers directions and things like that. You can actually get around a little bit. If you stay in the big cities, you can come and not know any Japanese and get around. Some taxi drivers won't pick you

[40:42]

up or can't help you much because they don't know a few words of English, but a lot will know a few words of English. To do anything like read a newspaper, which requires knowing about 2,000 kanji, 2,000 characters, I would guess would take a couple years of study, minimum in Japan, of 40 hours a week study. And after a year, you can do almost everything you need to do if you study, say, 30, 40 hours a week. After a year, conversationally, you can speak to people about most of what's necessary. How do you get the window open? Where do I find a carpenter? Tomorrow, are the stores open? You know, that kind of thing. More complex than just taxi directions. But you couldn't, after a year, you can't have an intellectual conversation with anybody. You can converse about your own life because you know the vocabulary,

[41:44]

but if they start talking about their life, you don't know what's going on. And then, of course, there's the problem of dialects. Every area has their own dialects, and the words are a little bit different, enough different that I can't understand my daughter when she speaks in Kyoto dialect. Now, in the monasteries, at a place like Entaiji, you need very little. The more you know, the better, but you don't have to know too much. After a few months, you'd probably know enough to understand when they said, go down the hall, or do this, or do that. In Daitoku-ji, or a Rinzai monastery, as I said, you don't need so much because your initial, unless you entered as a monk, which I don't think you'd probably do, you don't need so much, just enough to know what time Zazen begins and ends, things like that. In Eheiji, I think it's a little more difficult because the, well, several people from Zen

[42:51]

Center have gone to Eheiji cold, not knowing a word of Japanese, and managed. But the difficulty is that the beginning monk's job, your first job, is to, as I understand it, is to make the schedule work for the entire monastery, which means you ring bells and do this and that, right? Well, that's rather complicated, and you have to know a great deal of Japanese to figure out when you're supposed to ring the bell, and if you don't ring the bell at the right time, you're punished. Well, Graham had a very difficult time because for three months he didn't know what was going on, he didn't know when to ring the bells or anything, and he kept being punished. Hell's bells. I talked with Tatsugami Roshi, who's going to come here next, this spring, I think. He was head of training in Eheiji for, I don't

[43:58]

know how long, Katagiri Sensei, ten years or fifteen years? Eight years. Eight years. Well, he was head of the Soto training for eight years, about, in Eheiji. And perhaps out of his experience with the Americans who've come and not known English, not known Japanese, and after conversing with me, he advised me to postpone going to Eheiji as long as possible, because he felt that the more Japanese I know, the better that initial period will be. There's some value in just going and doing it, cold. I think there's more value for that from somebody who doesn't know anything about Buddhism. If you've been studying a little through a year or so, you don't gain so much by doing that, except a kind of shock that you don't have here already. So if you're into Buddhism and want to go, I feel there's

[45:05]

two ways to go. One is, at any time in your study, you go as a kind of tourist to see what Japan is like and get a feeling for the monasteries, and if you get a particular place you like, make plans to come back. The other way to go is if you're planning to be a Buddhist all your life, and not only be a Buddhist, but make that the central part of your life, and you feel you should go to Japan, though I don't think even then it's necessary. I think practice here in America is satisfactory, more than satisfactory. But if you do feel that way and you want to go, then it's very absolutely essential to learn as much language as possible, and plan to stay for... make your arrangements so you can stay for at least two or three years. It's a formidable task, actually. Does Roshi have any type of speaking?

[46:07]

No. As far as I know, there are no Roshis who speak English, except for Suzuki Roshi and Mumon... Yamada Mumon Roshi, I think, who... his temple is in Kobe, and he's connected with Myoshinji in Kyoto. And I don't know how good his English is, but he does take American disciples, or Caucasian disciples, and has a German boy, an American girl, and maybe one other. He's rather old, but I think he's one of the... he has a reputation of being one of the best Zen masters in Japan. Sonen Roshi. That's right, excuse me. Sonen Roshi speaks English. Perhaps the reason I didn't mention him right away, because I know him and have spoken English with him considerably, is that he's not teaching and hasn't been teaching for some time, and has got some mysterious

[47:07]

ailment that no one exactly talks about, but it seems to be perhaps neurological damage of some kind, which he sleeps a great deal of the time. And so he's not functioning as a teacher at all. And so he's not a person you can go to. I've sent a number of students... People come to me all the time in Japan and ask, where shall I set pattern of what kind of person they're supposed to be? But that's hard to explain exactly what I mean so briefly. But anyway, there's a different relationship, which generally I was trying to give a positive side of it. The negative side of it, from American people's point of view, is that the women look very badly treated. I don't think they're so badly treated, but they look that way, and a lot of American women feel that they're not treated well by the Japanese men. So there's this hierarchical relationship in society in which the women are low down on the scale. Okay, the wives of priests are even farther down the scale. In fact, in Daitokuji,

[48:13]

some of the top priests seem to hide their wives. It's very difficult to find... You hear they have a wife and you never see her and she's never mentioned. There's a kind of ignoring the fact that you have a wife. It's not really part of your practice and perhaps a distraction. So the family situation is not included for the serious monastery priest. Not included somehow in the practice. The practice doesn't include his wife. His wife is more of a problem. Which he has to sort of, like, learn to handle. This is not true, I think, in the small villages. Because in the small villages the wife is essential, because she has more of the kind of contact with the village which makes the temple work. I sometimes call Japanese Buddhism big roofism instead of Buddhism, because in every small village there's a big roof. And

[49:16]

that big roof is the meeting house and center for most of the functions of the village. And in that sense the woman and the man are very important. But in the monasteries themselves, the wife of a priest is rather a side issue. So when you come, you're expected to treat your wife in the same way. In other words, you're expected to think nothing of going into the monastery for indefinite periods of time and not seeing her. And there may be advantage too. I think part of practice has to be to learn my own opinion. I don't know if Suzuki Roshi or Katagiri would agree. But you have to, even if you're married, you have to learn how to take that kind of sexual energy and not repress it or suppress it, but transform it into your life. And I think one can learn how to do that. And if you do learn how to

[50:17]

do that, then it makes no difference to you whether you're separated from your wife or not, because there's a kind of positive aspect to that energy, not negative aspect, which is just as valuable as living with your wife. And that may be important to learn, but still there's another side which is in present day society, it's also important to be a householder, I think, I feel anyway. So if you feel that way, which has nothing to do with sex, but it's important to have a household and a child and have that kind of life too, then that's easier to do here. If you do it in Japan, you have to, on one side, follow the rules of the monastery, and the other side, keep your wife and child or whatever in a house somewhere and visit them when you can. And there are ways, particularly if you establish a confidence in yourself by the priest in the monastery where you're studying, where

[51:20]

probably they'll make some arrangement for you to visit your wife. Now I am guessing that if I, say, study at Daito-koji for a time, when I go to Heiji, I'll have to be completely separated from Virginia. In fact, they don't even want my wife to be, I think, in Fukui. They'd prefer that she's not be near. But certainly after three months, I'll visit. And then if I stay another three months, I'd be probably separated most of the time. If I stayed a year or so, I could probably make some arrangement where I could, I'm guessing, but I could probably make some arrangement where I saw her every couple of weeks or once a month. Now, in Rinzai, it's much easier. Well, you can do that. You see, you can go through a Heiji, and then you can switch and study in a Soto Dharma temple, a small temple. And then you could have your wife either with you or near, fairly easily. But at that point, you can also come back here. Now, if you want to go through your monastic training in Rinzai

[52:23]

instead of Soto, I think it's easier to even be in the monastery itself and have a wife nearby. I don't think they like it, but they'd probably make the exception. And they have quite a different schedule than Soto does, in which they have three weeks of Sesshin each month. But it's not our kind of Sesshin. All their sitting is called Sesshin. So they have three weeks, and then they have sort of a week off. And that week off, you could probably live at home. And then in three weeks, you could live in the monastery. And if you didn't want to live in the monastery, you can participate in all the activities of the monastery, because they're in cities, and live at home. But you'd have to be able to freely come and go, and it would be pretty difficult to have much time to work. You could teach a little English or something. Does that answer your question? Yeah, I'll take two or three at once and add them up. Yours? Well, okay, I'll explain that. And yours?

[53:31]

A little. Of course, Joyce is in one of them, Joyce Browning, and it's working out fairly well. Well, atmosphere may be some difference. I would say that the average nunnery probably isn't as good a place to practice as the average monastery. But probably a good nunnery is as good as a good monastery. And there are ways in which women can work out practicing in the monasteries. Most of the women who've gone to Japan to study Buddhism, like Ruth Fuller Sasaki and Irmgard and others, have studied in monasteries with men. They've not gone to nunneries. There's very few cases of people going to nunneries that I know of. It's something that can be done. And one thing I'm looking sort of like have my feelers out for is if there's a possibility of an arrangement where a husband and wife or women can go to

[54:38]

a nunnery, which might be near enough to other Americans staying in a monastery, where there could be some contact between them. And there's the possibility even nearest, where there's a little nunnery down the street from Antigua, where it's possible that there could be some Zen center girls studying there. That would take quite a lot of figuring out to make it work, but it's possible. And then some men at Antigua. And then it's possible that the things which are helpful to them, like some chance to speak English and some chance to have a lecture in English by somebody who speaks English, could be arranged together and things like that. The system, I think, in Japan is that there are Dharma, the way I describe it, there are Dharma temples and training monasteries. And that's Dharma temples is from the point of view of the monks. In other words, you have a Dharma teacher. I believe Suzuki Roshi had a teacher who was head of Rinzō-in, whose responsibility is

[55:42]

to prepare him, or a monk, for Eheji. And after Eheji, to continue his training. And then you inherit that temple. So you have two teachers. You have your home temple teacher, or Dharma teacher, I think it's called, and then you have your training teacher during the time. And I guess there are various variations on that. But something like that. Almost all monks in Japan, I suppose there's almost no exceptions, come to the monasteries after quite a lot of time in another temple, preparing to come, learning the chants, how to sit, and a lot of intellectual, perhaps, teaching about Buddhism and information, things like that. And then there's usually four years spent in a college. Well, these ones in the Dharma temples, they have to, at some time, go through, at least

[56:46]

they're supposed to, at some time, go through one of the big monasteries in order to be considered a priest, right? A lot of these are just young boys, fifteen, et cetera, going to high school, and they never continue. Some continue. Some are sons of priests. But I think that's an entirely different thing. That's quite a different... I mean, the comparison between Zazen training and the kind of training we are getting here, you can only compare it to the monasteries there. We also are trying to do some of the work of the home temple, too. We're a kind of combined home temple, and in fact, San Francisco might be the home temple and Tassajara, something like that. But we're trying to do several things at once, which in Japan are a little... Okay, that's... Suzuki Roshi, is there anything you want me to... or Category Sense, anything I should speak about or mention? Anything else?

[57:46]

No. Okay. If you want, maybe some questions. More questions? Okay. In America, we usually only talk for forty minutes, and I've talked forty minutes. But I'll take a couple more questions. Hai. Yes, I mean, that means... Hai means yes in Japanese. When I got on the ship, there was a Japanese girl, and the first half of the trip, they'd come to wake me up. Time for breakfast, and I'd say, Hai! Chotto matte! And I'd try to order my food in Japanese, and I spoke to this Japanese girl in Japanese. But by the middle of the trip, I was finding it more and more difficult to speak to the Japanese girl, and seldom responding to anything except in English, but occasionally I... Anyway, Hai. What was the most related experience you've had with the Japanese girl?

[58:49]

Ah. I'll say. Yeah, I'll say. Well, I have... I spent a year accumulating material for answering that kind of question, and I have enough for about ninety hours of lecture. And this is what... I have stacks of little notes now, which I'm trying to put together to answer that kind of question, because it's fundamental to practicing Buddhism. I think somebody's written on the my Esslin lectures, I'll talk... Some of it will relate to practicing Buddhism. Actually, I think it's part and parcel. The kind of things I'm going to try to talk about in Esslin are essential for anybody seriously trying to study Buddhism in the context of an Oriental Western cultural situation. And the difficulty in answering such a question is that the differences

[60:00]

are both enormous and slight, and they look slight, but the impact is enormous. So to give you an actual feeling for it, I have to talk about a number of different aspects, and then show you the effect of that on people's behavior and things like that. And that's rather difficult, and that's what I'm going to try to do in the two Esslin lectures and at the seminar down at... The Esslin lectures are here in the city, and the seminar is down at Big Sur. But if any of you can come to the two lectures here in the city, Yvonne, I think, has tickets for it. I'd appreciate it just because I'd feel good to have an audience, part of an audience out there, which knows a lot about what I'm talking about, and it would make it a much more meaningful experience for me. And you'd also have very good questions and things like that. Yeah? Anything else? Yeah?

[61:07]

Well, I think, similar enough. A little different schedule of lecture and things like that, and less work time. But nuts. In Tassajara, every temple has a little different schedule. In fact, they have a logbook which goes back hundreds of years of exactly what was done in 1374 on such and such a day, and that they lit a certain candle for such and such. And it's still followed. They look up in the logbook each day, I think, at least in Rinzai they do. What should we do? And I suppose Tassajara will eventually have such a logbook. See if there's anything you'd like to know which I haven't told you. I have lots of funny stories about banks and cats and things like that. They don't pertain exactly. Yeah? Yeah, that's true. And that's more and more people are beginning to realize that it makes

[62:28]

sense to study here and not go to Japan, unless you're really going to make the kind of effort which allows you to make the thing in Japan work. Which, as I say, statistically, practically no one has made work. I mean, out of the hundreds, as I said, there are just four or five or six. And only one has gone through it to completion. I'll give you a little quick finish up on Japan. Japan's the size of Montana in land area and has half the U.S. population. And so it's rather crowded. But not as crowded as it needs to be. I mean, not as crowded... doesn't have to be as crowded as it is. They live much closer together than I would say under the same land-space circumstances we would choose to live. Because they're able to live that way. And this maybe sounds a little funny, but one of the things you're

[63:38]

Japanese people. I mean, you sort of forget yourself now and you're sort of driving along and you look around and the person in the next car or on the street is Japanese and you look and everyone's Japanese, you know. And that does strike one over and over again, you know. It's just like America, but everybody's Japanese. And the other thing that strikes one quite often is that it's just like America, but everything's so small. And it really is small. I mean, I've been tried... I've tried to be pretty alert and not bump my head and I've never knocked myself out or anything. But I have bumped my head 107 times this last year, rather hard. I kept count. And it's like living in our house, which is the floor area is smaller than my apartment in the city here in San Francisco was. But actually we

[64:41]

have more space because there's no furniture, just tatami, you know. And we throw the bedding into the walls and et cetera. So the space we have is quite adequate. But the feeling I have walking around is I'm living in a ship anchored by a garden. Because it's a little like being on a sort of six person cruiser or something like that. And there are actually... This is hard to believe, but there are actually grown Japanese men and women standing straight who are this tall. And there are many who stooped, old people, who have this thing of having permanently bent back from working, I guess, who are this tall. And it really is staggering, you know, to... I mean, Katagiri-sensei is quite a giant, you know. Sometimes my

[65:46]

wife and I are walking along the street and we see some foreigners, some Americans. They're called gaijin, you know, outsiders. And we look, Ginny and I say, gaijin. Look how big they are. And you walk along and you say, look how huge they are. They're so fat and clumsy. And the Japanese people seem very neat and precise and quick and quite... That seems very beautiful, you know. And the Americans, tourists particularly, most of them should stay in Indianapolis or wherever they're from. And you really... And Ginny and I will be walking along the street. Boy, are they big. And we walk by them and we're taller than both of them. And Ginny says, do I look like that? And another thing, Japanese people

[66:51]

seem very quick and they're... I mean, you go to the bank and they count money. Isn't that true, Katagiri-sensei? You know, they give me my change. And there's some feeling in Japan you're not supposed to count your change because you're supposed to trust people. So I take it and I go out of the bank and I count to one, two. And it's right, you know. It's always right. And everything is done very quickly, you know. I'm used to hear, for instance, Zazen finishes, you know. And the bell rings and sashin. And I start, you And I look around and the room's empty. That's true, isn't it? It's amazing, you know. All

[67:54]

day you've been sitting here in your twelfth period of a sashin, you know. And the bell goes bong. I don't feel like that. And I'm still, you know. And the eating, everything is done that way, you know. I'm always the tail end. I look down the hall and they're all... So there's a slightly different rhythm, you know. Which sometimes I think they need the tea ceremony to slow down. But on the streets, the pace in Tokyo, you know. And I've lived in New York quite a long time. The pace in Tokyo is sort of like that. And New York maybe isn't. And you hear it in the rock and roll. Our rock and roll is sort of if it's boom, boom, boom, boom. Japanese rock and roll tends to be boom, [...] boom. And so there's a different kind of pace, which is one of the most striking things which hits you when you first come to Japan is that Tokyo and Yokohama, everything seems to go so quickly, you know. It takes a little while to get used to it. And in monasteries,

[68:57]

the pace is very quick. At the same time, there's this deep calmness and very deep sense of rhythm. And one of the things is the... There's a sense, much more than we have here, I would say, of a sense of a way, not of a teacher or a Roshi, but of a way, of Buddha's way and a way of life and a way of behaving, which goes beyond being a teacher. You immerse yourself in that way. And it's a very deep feeling. And when you go to a monastery, any of the big monasteries, there's a kind of rhythm of the life, of the pace and the walking and the way people behave, which is a very deep feeling. And it's related to your heartbeat and your breathing and your own rhythms. And every time I've been to one of those monasteries and not understood a word of the lecture or anything else, and left after one hour or

[70:03]

two hours, I've gone away and walking up the street back to my house with some feeling, some calm, okay feeling, which lasts for quite a few days. And that kind of rhythm or way is a very beautiful and important thing. And I think Tassajara has it to some extent, and perhaps our Buddhist life here will have it more. I've said many good things about Japan. Let me say one kind of negative. I thought I was going to be more negative than I've been, because there are many difficult aspects to living in Japan. It seems, I've asked many Japanese people what kind of difficulties they have here, and in general they don't seem to have the kind of difficulties we have. And business people in Tokyo don't have much trouble, but scholars and people studying the formal aspects and traditional aspects of Japan have quite a lot of trouble, because the way of organizing experience is different, and it's different in ways which we don't

[71:08]

understand and is confusing to us, and often quite irritating, because we tolerate a lot of individual ego, for instance, but we don't tolerate group ego. And there's a great deal of kind of group ego, a group organization of things, which is quite difficult sometimes. I can't go into it, but I'll just say that most of the foreigners who I know who live in Kyoto spend a great deal of time having a great deal of difficulty with Japanese culture, which finally they often come to terms with, either by avoiding the aspects that bother them or understanding them better. This is probably the most difficult area for anybody studying Buddhism. But on the other hand, there is this deep sense of a way and a tradition, which as I said, when I left Shokoku-ji, I felt, and I've left the monasteries, I feel, and still, after leaving Japan, I still feel here in America the power of that deep tradition they have there. Thank you.

[72:10]

@Transcribed_v002L
@Text_v005
@Score_93.83