It's hard to believe. When we were in Japan, when I was in the bathroom, everything is very small. I'm actually not so big, but everything is very small. So you're in a squat toilet in a very small room. Can I? Am I in Japan? And then when you're here, it's hard to bring you back here. There's so much to say. You know, you prepare for a trip.

[01:26]

That's one sentence, when you prepare for a trip, but there's a lot of things that happen with yourself before you go. And you have your apprehension. many things to think about, what to bring, all kinds of things. And then finally go. It was really wonderful that Chidon Roshi And as you fly to the far east, you go into light.

[02:33]

It's all light. I guess I don't know how that works. You fly. You feel like you're flying into the sun. So you don't sleep very well. It's a new feeling of it. Just at the airport you saw all the Japanese stewardess lined up. A new kind of feeling, and for us it's kind of interesting because they think we're Japanese. It was kind of unusual. So I began speaking to you, and then quickly you would say, I'm sorry I can't speak Japanese.

[03:41]

It takes 17 hours. time difference and actual flying time is 10 to 8 hours. And so we arrived in 9 hours with favorable winds. We came one hour earlier. We were met at the airport by a young Japanese man, Yoshikawa. It's nice to have someone to meet you. It's very difficult to do anything.

[04:44]

If you want to make a telephone call, it takes a long time. The telephone doesn't have any numbers on it. It's just a simple thing. The telephone may be out of order. And you can catch some of the lettering. You don't know exactly what they're saying. A little piece of paper. Anyway, so he drove us. I think we must have, I forgot what time we got here, but it was probably about 12 o'clock midnight in Tokyo. And then it was like a three-hour ride from there to Yaisen. Japan is a really wonderful country.

[06:00]

You know, I'm not a photographer, but I try to take as many pictures I said, could you just stand there? We must have shot over, I don't know how many rolls of film, but quite a few, at least a dozen or more, or 20. But the ones we wanted to take, you know, just impossible to take. So after we arrived at Yaizu and through their highway, I think we got lost on the way.

[07:21]

Japan seems like broken up, at least in the small cities. And so, Yaisu is a night-time arrival, so it was Shops all over Japan. A very fancy kind of coffee house in between Japanese aesthetic sense and McDonald's.

[08:30]

of coffee so we went there and from there I had no idea how far the temple was. Anyway, it's just five minutes from, in car, from Yaizu to Rinzai and that's, that's Urochi's temple. So we arrived there in the evening. Welcomed by this Tsukuroshi's son's family, Hojo-sama. I don't think we've ever been so close to a family.

[09:49]

And so when we came in, there's a huge sliding door. You see that picture? It's that lower picture with the brown on the right-hand side, the lower one, sort of by itself. Can you point to it, Sean? See that one there? That's where you enter into their house. There's... The temple structure is built like a... from a certain period of Chinese architecture, maybe some. But a U, kind of U shape. U shape. And that structure there is this side of the U. So there's a courtyard here. And this U. And that section there is 200 years old. Just 200 years old. And the other... part of the temple is 500 years old.

[11:10]

So it's been there a long time. So there's these big sliding doors you pull back and it's sort of like a huge garage but with no car. So the temple is like two-thirds roof and one-third structure. There's no heat, much colder than it is here.

[12:23]

And he had two sort of kerosene heaters at a diagonal. And they had this big dinner ready for us. We had what Suzuki Roshi used to eat, was kenshin, some Chinese kind of soup. Genshin soup. I remember that name 10 years ago because he wanted me to make something, but I didn't know how to make it. mushrooms inside that. So we had that in the evening.

[13:30]

And I can't remember going to bed that evening. But when you think about it, if we arrived at three, maybe it must have been four by the time we got to bed. And we were up In one way it was a very difficult trip, even for the children. And Laura, it was more like day to day. And then at the same time, the idea of space is very interesting there.

[14:35]

It's a group of violins. And everything, since there's not much space, every bit of space is used. So like rice is grown everywhere in little gardens, and like in a family, say a family table, there's maybe no bigger than that. It goes on that folded in half, three by three. And on top of that there's a, underneath that there's a blanket. But if there's six or seven people there, there's really not that much heat.

[15:42]

So the space is very small. Some men would be drinking tea called beer. And somebody would be watching TV from the table. And occasionally a child would get lost under the table. Could be swarming. Go to sleep. One evening, Oksan was pouring tea and some of it spilled. I'm pouring hot water into a teapot, and it spilled, and it spilled on her child, but she didn't know her child was such a stupid girl.

[16:45]

I think, too, like, Just this short visit, you realize the immensity of one culture. And when you hear students say, well, maybe a little bit of Zen and change to a little bit of Tibetan. But one culture is enough. You realize how wide and deep one culture is. Maybe here we don't have that kind of sense because everything is so young, 200 years old.

[18:01]

It's interesting, people were asking what kind of schedule I had, and they asked if I sat a lot. One thing I think that was the most constant was not the sitting, but the bowing. So I was asked to do So I kind of thought maybe the ceremony should be just a week, but actually it turned out it was the whole time I was there.

[19:36]

I was sort of gradually through the bowing and opening of that to work into. Because if we, we must learn meaning of bowing. And even, I felt even there Not knowing how to speak Japanese.

[21:35]

Moral intuition. And sometimes two arrows meet in the sky. And most of the time, two arrows don't meet. In a conversation, just over an orange, maybe. The name of an orange. You think you got it, but... After it's over, you wonder. During our stay there, It was February, or January 27th and 28th that we had a chance to go to Egypt before the transmission ceremony.

[22:43]

And so the transmission ceremony, sort of, the actual date sort of started, I think the 4th. 4th to the 11th. And so, I stayed mostly at the temple and then sometimes, just maybe one day, not very often Laura would try to go to town. Although it was explained how to, even in America, when someone draws you a map and you can speak the language, this is how to get there. A lot of things happen. doesn't have that mark that you said it did. And so they went to town a couple of times, but not that often. And so that's one place I wanted to go if I was to go to Japan.

[23:50]

And so this was our first trip on the train. The bullet train. Shinkansen bullet train to outside of where we were. Yaizu is more of a small fishing village in Rinzou. You can see the ocean from Rinzou. a small canyon, and then the mountains. Not that high. Not more than 2,500 feet, 3,000 feet. And tea is growing all over the mountains. So to catch the train, you had to take another train to go back towards Tokyo, then from Tokyo.

[25:04]

which way do we go? South. It was like a, maybe a three hour, three hour ride. So it was our first time out on this train. They arranged for us to have reserved seats. It was very but just to find the right train to get on and try to remember what the lettering looked like to recognize that we were on the right train and then to what platform is it and what time it leaves and when you get off to get off at the right place so yeah about three quarters the way up

[26:12]

We didn't know how the cities followed, so we did it by time. And so it seemed like this was the place to get off. So we got all our baggage together and we got off. And as soon as I stepped off, I knew it was the wrong place. So we took our tickets to the embarrassed for your mistakes, right? Because everything seems to be done together in Japan. It was your mistake because they're mistaken. So he took it to another, I guess, the cheap ticket man and luckily there was another Anyway, it was snowing at Eheiji, and not a lot of snow, but the feeling of it was more, not as grim as you see in the pictures, because everything was closed in.

[27:29]

And we were the only guests for that day, four of us. because it was too cold. And the hotel section was heat. And Hojo-sama said that when you go there and you meet the Roshi, there's a lot of bowing. Even lay people bow to each other on the floor, and their heads touch the floor. Then you say, YORUSHIKU ONOGAESHIMASU Say like you're in a hotel, but instead of the counter being high, it's very low, and there's mats. So you see him, you go up and you bow to him, and you say those words, YORUSHIKU, meaning like kind of goodness,

[28:36]

meaning I'm placing myself in your trust. Please help me do the right thing. It's that kind of feeling, trust. And so luckily we had a Shinko-san, he could speak German and English pretty well. So he took us around, got a room, and it's a very large hotel. Built near the entrance of the Heiichi. For us it was kind of tense because we were to meet Roshi there and also offer incense.

[30:09]

And so, you know, you come in on your street clothes and there's a lot of formality. So before you meet the Roshi, you have to change into your robes. That's their way. Those stairs, it's built on the side of a hill. It's very hard to explain. So as you slowly depart from the heat of the hotel, it becomes colder and colder and colder. In fact, a heiji is a freezer, I would say. Long corridors with very... Stair heights are about like so. Very gentle. And the depth of one stair would be like so.

[31:21]

But very long. I don't know. Feeling of 200 feet long. Unless you go to one, then you go into another. It turns into another one. And the Heiji would be like the... I guess you could say like the Vatican in Rome for Buddhism, Zen Buddhism in Japan. And we made a lot of these turns and we were going up until finally the quarters got smaller and smaller and we ended up in this beautiful room. And we made some gift from Kenchoji. I think it was like 10,000 yen, which is about $40.

[32:23]

10,000 yen. You have to fold it a certain way. And it was presented when Roshi came out. You know, old man, gentle old man. And I thought, he had tea and crackers with him. I think he was, they were having a flu there in Japan. And just a... Kind of very warm feeling from him. told our family to take care of ourselves, take good care of your health. So after that, I was asked if I'd like to sit zazen with the monks there.

[33:28]

And if I would like to, I could sit on a kaitan, which is the Say it's our soto, then you have a hallway outside of it. You can sit in the hallway, because there's a training period going on. And so in the evening, after dinner, we sat in the hotel, the hotel part first. I think we have some pictures of that. And either weekly or monthly, some Roshi comes and gives a lecture to the lay practitioners. During that week, we had visited potters in the Yaizu area.

[34:32]

And Hojo-sama was describing when he sees a piece of artwork that moves him, When he turns around from it, he feels it looking at him. And so that evening, the Roshi was walking around with his stick, but they walked very quiet, very quiet. And once in a while you'd hear, bah, bah, bah. So I remember what Hojo-san said, and then I could feel it. I felt someone right on that corner there coming, and I just kind of looked a little unsure. There he was. For dinner, And the rooms, everything is so beautiful because you have your futons.

[35:49]

The monks come and they lay out these four futons for you all in a row. And there's heat in the room. for that. It keeps you warm. Your feet are good. If your legs are long, your feet stick out. And then you also have yukatas. Yukatas is kind of a kimono to wear for your And they come in and bring these lacquered trays with just a bunch of good food on it. So after that, we sat and we asked Shinko-san if we could take a hot bath together.

[36:55]

And he said, yeah. So he took us downstairs. just in the hotel section, not sulfur, but just regular hot bath. After the hot bath, they showed us a movie of the Heiji, so just the four of us and two camera people. Very short film on the Heiji, and then that evening, that early, you could hear outside rushing streams See the snow falling. So in the morning, there's a special service for guests there that you offer incense. And I could see little by little how all these different halls are connected and what the importance of them are.

[38:06]

Like we just have the Soto, the meditation hall. And this more or less is like a Dharma hall, lecture hall, the Buddha halls where you chant and do ceremony. Anyway, so I used to get up earlier and do Zazen And then at a certain point, we would go back and meet the family and join them for morning service. There were probably about, probably a hundred monks there, chanting the Heart Sutra. And a very big room, all tatami inside. probably more decorated and more familiar with, but just right.

[39:09]

Because we're familiar with Meditation Hall. So when we see golden dragons and things, we might think it's a little bit too flashy, but actually it's just right. And Mokugyo is made by like this big. Six feet. So Ryokan, Laura, and Damien had to kneel. See, like, he was the front of the altar. All these monks were here, huge, those Buddha pillars in between. And there was a small altar down at the other point of the ceremony we would offer incense. You know that familiar thing when you get up, sometimes you don't know if your feet will make it.

[40:18]

Because it's cold and we often sit There was a special event of offering incense, nine bows for Dogen Zenji. And again, we felt very honored for this, because it doesn't happen very often. And also to see the image of Dogen Zenji. So there's some kind of a sounding instrument that's used to announce our coming. And I'm the only person that's supposed to see the image.

[41:19]

And my family stands back to the corner of the room. So, you know, because this Founders Hall is not worshipped, you know, but you pay homage to it, because I don't know where I would be I'm not sure what I would be doing, and I'm not sure if our lives would have crossed. Or I don't know if I have a chance to meet Suzuki Roshi.

[42:23]

See how it all connects. that respect back. And so after going through many corridors and sounding, and our Shinko-san, I asked him if he had ever seen it. He said he, all the time he's been there he hasn't seen it himself. So finally, In a way, it was like the Black Crown Ceremony. There were no musical instruments there, but there sure was. At that time of the morning, it felt like you were in a cave. It was very cold. Stone floors, but diamond-shaped.

[43:29]

Not one speck of dust, beautiful calms, and bowing, bowing back. And so my family stands in the corner, and the light is supposed to go up, and walk sideways, and then sometimes I don't understand what they say to me. So, Ryogen said, maybe you're afraid to look at it because it might blow out his mind. So he decided to look down. Damien jumped out of the window. You have no idea what it's supposed to look like or the image of Dogen. And you're the only one to see it, you know. Wait, so there's the buying mat, and then there's the stairs that go up, and then way at the end of the stairs, must be, it felt like, 50 feet from where they were standing.

[44:42]

And then a monk that sits and rolls up this thing, it sounded like chains. Goes up. And then, I didn't see anything. My mom turned around and said, did you see it? No, he didn't say that, but... Just the feeling like a black crown ceremony, you're expected to... You know, see something or something is going to snap inside of you. In fact, you know, like we said before, these eyes can't see. Can't see that.

[45:44]

It won't. No matter how wide you look or how much sleep you have, it won't. And then the nine bows. And then for us, at that point, we felt relaxed, because we had done what we were supposed to do there. Asked us if we wanted to go sightseeing. And before we knew it, it was time to go back. I think maybe what I'll do is six after ten, maybe space out our story into different parts.

[47:05]

Would anybody like to say anything? Welcome us back. Actually, that's very appropriate. You know, when you hear the word appropriate, you think you should say it, but actually, it's very natural. What is it that you say when, in Japanese, it's like, I entrust myself to the goodness? I can write it out for you. I don't know in English.

[48:56]

I'm sure we have something similar to it. But maybe it's not used very well. Do you have any ideas, Sensei, while you were in Japan about Genji-ji and things you'd like to see different here or changed while you were there or wasn't, didn't that happen sometimes? I think going over there and people who practice Zen there are more sympathetic to people who go to foreign countries and practice Buddhism. We do it every day.

[49:58]

It's very, you can get very paranoid. It's too much, I think, for us to go there and study. I think our situation was more intense because we lived there. There was no time at all for 30 days. But even now, I don't see and there are changes in that way. We should have the same way. That's very important. But there will be a difference with the same way. And how it manifests here isn't the same. I don't say the changes, but how we So you build a meditation hall.

[51:14]

It can be packed, but very empty. This is the danger of practice. The change has to come from inside. Inside change. It's all the same. It's not some outer form. When you ask that, try to practice that with your children.

[52:20]

With your family, it's most difficult.

[52:26]

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