I would say that pre-Plato, the West had what you might call a body culture, and after Plato you have what you might call a mind culture. I would say that almost polar opposites are Japan and America, in some ways, that America is very much a mind culture, though I think shifting to being a body culture, and that shift is the reason for the interest in Buddhism and all kinds of other things that are going on today in America. And Japan, I think, is more of a body culture than China is, for instance. Whatever I mean by that. But I would say that Japan is the most, while it's the most Asian country in most westernized country in Asia, it's perhaps the most non-western country in the world. And I don't know for sure, of course, because I haven't gone and lived in other countries, but my experience in talking with people who've spent extensive times in other Asian countries, I feel that.

[01:14]

Recently, this last year, Bhagavan Das, I don't know, you know who Baba Ram Das is? Dick Alpert? that man who turned Baba Ramdas on to his teacher, Nim Karoli Baba, is a marvellous young man named Bhagavandas. He has six years of blond hair and beard. He's nearly seven feet tall with his hair atop his head. And he studied mostly Buddhism. But his style is a sadhu tradition. And he just loves to... to bow and chant. We'd go to Buddhist temples in Japan, Mount Hiei and other temples together. We spent quite a lot of time together in Japan, several months. He immediately would start doing full prostrations. All seven feet of him, you know, with beads and a mala of skull and clothes wrapped around him.

[02:19]

And all the time... I can't chant this, so low. It sounded like the outboard motor of the universe. Anyway, here he comes, looking like a storybook giant. Are we going to tell him the Japanese priests are about this tall? He'd come running up to me and he'd say, Sometimes they'd start to try to bow and he'd be bowing. Fifty prostrations. And then he'd get up and he'd start circumambulating with him. With big strides. Anyway. He's a really marvelous person. But when he first came to Japan, he said, Japan is... just as the West, he says, this is terrible, I can't stand it, the exhaust fumes, and office buildings, taxi cabs, etc.

[03:35]

And he was there just about three months. He said to me one day, he said, you know, Japan is stranger than Nepal or India ever dreamed of being. And I think that's right in a way, is that for Japanese people, for instance, they think of India as the West. And I don't know about Tibet, you know, I've never been to Tibet. My feeling from reading is that Tibetan people and Indian people think more like Western people. There's some logic, fundamental... I know it has to do with Tibetan language, right? Some relation to Sanskrit or what. But the fundamental logic of the mind is more similar to Western people than Japanese and Chinese. So, what I mean by body culture is, you can see it most clearly when you ask a Japanese person or a Chinese person, what is the character for the tanji, you know, the calligraphy for such and such.

[04:36]

And he says, intelligence is in his hand. The memory is in his hand, not in his head. And I found this true when I used to... One time I used to be very busy, like now I'm not. I swear it's a relief, but I used to be very busy. One time I knew the phone numbers of, forgive me for saying so, but perhaps a thousand people across the United States and their home phones and private minds. My head didn't know it at all. After a while, I mean, it just overflowed. And I could think, well, Yvonne, that's our number. I couldn't write it down at all, but I could dial it with my finger. Japan has this intelligence almost entirely. Everyone's abandoned thinking about anything. It's all, the intelligence is all here. Practice Buddhism in Japan with your teacher for 50 years and neither of you'd ever have to exchange a word. We're going to practice Zen here and we have to know something about what a body culture is.

[05:44]

Thoughts are related to experience of space as the fundamental dimension and not time. For example, again, you can take any Western number or letter and you can construct it out of two-by-fours if you want. Let's say you take an A, you can lay another one here, and you can put a cross beam across and you've got an object called an A. If you take a Japanese, even from the syllabary, not even a kanji, it goes like this, then there's a space, and there's a thing, and there's a space, and there's a thing down here. And when you notice, Westerners start to study, they put this, and then they attach it, because they want to make it into an object. And for Chinese and Japanese people, there's no necessity to experience a space there which is manifested. They drive their cars that way, at first it's hair-raising. Yeah, until you get out of there, because it's like that.

[06:48]

It's quite scary. And their addresses are that way. You know, there's no such place. My house, for instance, wasn't a specific place, so much as you can't find anything in Japan. You can't find where anybody lives unless you know where to go. Because my house, for instance, was in the northern district of Kyoto in the purple bamboo area of the Northern District. And that was in the western mountain area of the purple bamboo district. And within that, it was the 31st house built in historical sequence. Well, you know, it's just unbelievable. You can't find anything. So there's that kind of difference. But most important in Buddhist practice is how to not stray from our true nature.

[08:02]

All this other stuff really doesn't count, actually. All of it depends on not straying from your true nature. The calmness of Zazen helps you to be free from physical and mental distractions. But it's only a help. Actually, you can't depend on anything. You can't depend on Zazen or your teacher. Practice is to know how to make your teacher help you. How to make your teacher be your teacher. Practice is to decide so-and-so is your teacher, whether he wants to be or not. And how to treat him as a Buddha. And your teacher's practice is how to be free from being treated as a Buddha.

[09:12]

How to let you treat him as a Buddha, but how not to be caught by that. In the Jungian sense, how not to let an archetype, the prophet or the poet or whatever, destroy you. So for the teacher, he lets the student treat him as a Buddha. But he must always be an ordinary man. So to practice Buddhism, you have to find out how to give yourself help through emptiness. How to give yourself help through all things. how to give yourself help through yourself, how to give yourself help through your teacher, and how to give yourself help through your friend, and how to give yourself help through your Sangha. And that means to be compassionate with everything, to be compassionate with your teacher, and your friend, be compassionate with the bowl, or stick, or bell, or whatever, because this is actually you too.

[10:24]

So what you want to do is end your clinging to things, end your ego-controlled thinking. Ego-controlled thinking can only know ego. It can't know Buddha. You have to give up ego-controlled thinking. Of course, there's some activity in your zazen, but there's a difference between ego-controlled thinking, which is some small mind, and thinking which is just the activity of your mind. Thinking, no thinking. But you can't do that until you're has, in some way, stopped creating karma. Be free from your karma.

[11:49]

The first step is to stop piling it up. That means, that's what all the lists are about, you know, like hateful, past, and movement. Because right livelihood means how to have employment which doesn't catch you, how to be honest, completely honest so you're not building up bad karma in relationship to other people. When you can completely be free, or as much as possible free from creating karma, that's simultaneously with dissolving. path. Much better. When you're creating karma, you're rather like a speedboat. It goes up a big wake because a lot of the energy of your activity is churning up the water rather than pushing the boat ahead on much more like a sailboat.

[13:01]

It goes very easily through the water and leaves almost no wake. No track. We say in Buddhism, cause seals effect, is the way it's translated, but actually, there's no such thing as effect on the stage. It's much better to say, cause seals cause. When every activity, everything you do is complete, it's just there. When you can do this, then there's no nose, no eyes, no ears. Center. I call casting aside. be awake to what you are, in zazen, out of zazen, whatever you are, be awake to that, do not run away from that, stay with it, whatever it is you are, accept that.

[14:44]

In the 10th century, Roshi and Hikiganroku asked, what is the body? And what Buddha said, the front gate, the temple, the front gate, the kitchen. So to practice, you must have a practice which doesn't give you much chance for ego-controlled thinking. You don't have to have a monastery or something like that. But it helps. It helps not to be married. I don't think actually there's any difference between being married or not married. Whatever it is, you have some sexual problems, you have some problems with whether you eat too much or don't eat too much. But if you're in a place which limits your consumptions, it's easier to practice. But in any situation, you can practice. get rid of these obstacles is necessary for zazen.

[15:52]

I think Dr. Kong's Buddhist meditation quotes from somewhere or other about in the first jhāna don't have, aren't free from the obstacle of karma, then even if you enter a trance, it translates as a trance. It's like a bee entering an unclean hive, flying out of a bee, or a king entering an untidy garden. But you have to be careful, because it's not a small mind which casts aside mind and body. It's now 10 minutes to 12, about.

[16:58]

We want to stand up for a second or two, but let's sit for 10 or 15 minutes and have lunch.

[17:05]

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