then they would assess what your consequences would be. So maybe you would be expelled for a while, or maybe you would have to wash the dishes, I don't know. There was a consequence for transgressions. So depending on the seriousness of the offense. But they did that twice a month, on the full moon and the new moon. So Parajika is the first section of the Bhakti-moksha precepts containing the four rules of expulsion from the order for unpardonable sins. are offenses, and these offenses cannot be absolved by a confession made by the transgressor before an assembly of Sangha or by a revolution of the said assembly itself for that resolution, for that effect.

[01:11]

In other words, there's nothing you can do about it. You're just out. The transgressor is as a needle without an eye, a broken stone which cannot be united a tree cut in two which cannot live, or a dead man. He is said to be completely defeated by the Buddhist religion and becomes a discomforter in all his lifetime. A bhikkhu who commits a parajika sin involves his exclusion from the community. He is not permitted to reordinate, and that's that. So that's pretty Was it left up for the monk to confess, or could the monk be charged and witnesses? Well, I'm sure he's away. Yeah, but it is up to the monk to confess.

[02:11]

That's the noble way. But if someone accuses that person, that's also But that has to be done in a way that is not... There's nothing behind it for the accuser. Judy. how, you know, the story of Angulimala fits in with this. Yeah, I'll tell you. He ordained after he had killed and he had a whole, you know, change of heart and so on. And yet the powerful thing of that story is that eventually, you know, he's stoned by the villagers and the Buddha tells him to bear it, he could and so on. And I'm wondering how that teaching folded in.

[03:15]

Well, you said it yourself. He was ordained after it. What you do before has nothing to do with it. So there's something to the, I would say, the graveness of the precept is that having vowed to do this and having transgressed to that degree, I suppose. I guess what I'm wondering is how this also meets a compassionate response and not just Yes, yes. So this is how the Mahayana arose. You're getting ahead of me. But the Mahayana arose through love and compassion. I'm presenting one side before I present the other.

[04:18]

So the side I'm presenting is the side of the strict adherence to the precepts. So these precepts were for the bhikkhus and the sravakas, I mean, the sravakas and the those disciples who are arhats, basically, but whose, this is of course Mahayana view, that this is why the followers of the precept school is called the Hinayana, because their whole understanding is to reach nirvana. In order to reach nirvana, they limit their activity to the most pure kind of activity and let go of the world.

[05:30]

So for a Hinayana practitioner, this is why it's called Hinayana, for a Hinayana practitioner, which means the small vehicle, to practice in the compassionate way of the bodhisattva is heresy. And for the bodhisattva to practice in the way of the Hinayana is called heresy. Suzuki Roshi used to talk about this a lot. I can't read through this whole thing, but I'm giving you some idea of it. These precepts, that's not the only, you know, side of the precepts. There's one division, which is the most extreme, right? And then there's the Sangha Vasesa group of precepts, and they are as follows.

[06:38]

They're great sins, and they verge on expulsion, but they demand confession, and there are ways They don't necessarily expel you for these. A bhikkhu who intentionally displaces his semen by any result of masturbation, excepting in a dream, is said to commit a Sanghavasesa sin. A bhikkhu who sexually touches any part of the body of a girl or a woman, even her hair, is said to commit a Sanghavasesa sin. The other bhikkhu, A bhikkhu who has a sexual thought and speaks to a girl or a woman with idiot words giving rise to sexuality is said to commit a saṅghavaśeśa sin. So those are some of those. A bhikkhu who destroys his religious class, behaves himself like a layperson, and is thereby lost caste with the other bhikkhus, and decries that the other bhikkhus put a wrong conception of thing on him,

[07:46]

And if after two successful warnings, the other bhikkhus give him the third warning, asking him to correct his behavior, and he pays no heed to it, he is said to commit a Sangha-basis of sin. So, if a strong-headed bhikkhu who is difficult to get along with because of his unreasonableness or injustice, and who acts contrary to the teachings, gets back his reply to a check in return, And if after two unsuccessful warnings, the other beaker was given the third warning, asking him to correct his conduct, he still persists in his objectionable actions, he is said to commit a Sangha Vastesa sin. Check and return? I don't know. They're probably, I don't know. Yeah. There's some typos or something in there. This is like, I can see it's typed. And then there, so those are examples, right? And the samayati, or resolution of penalty, the rules for confession of pardon are as follows.

[08:51]

The transgressor has to confess his sin before his fellow bhikkhus, not less than 20 in number. Otherwise, it is said that he is not absolved, and so forth. So the third section, anayata, the word anayata is interpreted as uncertain or indefinite karma. It is an action of an indeterminable, indeterminate means character, which is open to investigation, indeterminable. If a bhikkhu orders a bhikkhu, another one, who is not his relative to wash, tie, or comb the animal hair or fleece wool, he is said to commit a sin. If a bhikkhu receives any gold or silver, either by himself or by any other person who keeps it for him, he is said to commit a nāsārghika-prāya-siddhika sin. These words are really great. If a bhikkhu takes advantage of a layperson in the exchange in goods or things, he is said to commit a

[09:57]

So these are getting into minority, right? Then praya-skita is the fifth section. If a bhikkhu tells lies, either deliberately or undeliberately, he is said to commit a praya-skita sin. If Bhikkhu speaks in cursing terms, he is said to commit a prayaschita sin. A bhikkhu who tells a novice or layperson of his success in the way of Bodhi, which he really has, is said to commit a prayaschita sin. So there's some reasoning behind all these, whether we get it or not. And things change. in 2,500 years, and some things are very important to people in one era and not so important to people in another era. But I think there's a lot of good stuff. If a bhikkhu deliberately speaks in veiled terms, he is said to commit a prayaschita

[11:18]

So, veiled terms is kind of like secretive? Direct, not direct. Not direct, yeah. If a bhikkhu takes a bedding which belongs to the Sangha to sleep in any priest's cell and he does not bring it back or ask someone to take it back, he is said to commit a prayaschita sin. So I'm going to skip over a little bit. meaning there's no... Oh yeah, it's all literal.

[12:24]

This is totally literal. Yes, this is rules and regulations. And yes, it's all literal. There's no, nothing hidden. You don't have to think too much. This is what comes from more or less outside, right? Whereas Mahayana precepts come more from inside. So that's what we're getting to. And this is pretty much Indian way of practice.

[13:25]

But these precepts, of course, also went to China, and they also went to Japan. But in China, you know, they have ordination platforms. And when they ordained people, they ordained a whole lot of people at one time on the ordination platforms. And when they gave them the precepts, they would give them these precepts. The Mahayana arose at the same time as the Hinayana, so to speak, and everybody had the same precepts. But when Buddha spoke, this is the understanding, when Buddha spoke, what people heard was different things. You know, everybody heard according to their understanding and their disposition and their knowledge and so forth.

[14:27]

And so some people thought, well, Buddha said this, and they practiced that way. And then other people said, oh, Buddha said this, and they practiced that way. So they had 18 schools of Buddhism or more. And after Buddha passed away, These 18 schools were all deliberating with each other about what their actual practice is that Buddha was talking about. So the germ of the seeds of all these schools was there in whatever Buddha said, but the monks practiced in different ways according to their understanding of what they thought he said or meant. So the Mahayana arose at the It's the same time as the Hinayana, even though the old scholars used to think that the Mahayana came much later. The Mahayana kind of became prominent later. The Mahayana became prominent probably around a hundred years or so before the modern era.

[15:36]

And the Mahayana was more liberal. And the idea of the Mahayana was based on the Bodhisattva ideal instead of the Arhat ideal. The Arhat ideal, the bhikkhu was practicing for his own entry into nirvana, to actually give up the world, and not have anything really to do with the world, and live in a separate path than worldly. So that's why these restrictions, these precepts are so restricted, because you're not supposed to have any contact, other than to have people feed you, because you're practicing for them.

[16:45]

By practicing for them means that somebody is actually doing something that people feel is really noble, and so they support it. That's why in our meal chant, we say, does our virtue and practice deserve this meal? So we have a kind of, our meal practice is based on this understanding that you only eat one time a day, a middle day meal, and you beg for it. You go out and you ask people for food. You cannot dig in the earth, you cannot carry money. You have three robes and a bowl and maybe a little water strainer, and you watch out for the bugs. And that's it. And the dutangas are more severe kind of aesthetic practices.

[17:54]

There are 12 dutangas. You never go to sleep under the same tree twice, and you never go back to the same house again. Various restrictions that are more ascetic, because a lot of the monks who came to Buddha were ascetics. But Buddha was not exactly an ascetic, and he was a middle way guy. So, but he appreciated the ascetics because he'd been an ascetic, so he appreciated their desire. So, he allowed them to do these 12 Drutangas. I don't have a list of those, but they're kind of ascetic practices. And, you know, people think highly of, monks think highly of those.

[18:55]

But... What's an example? What's an example? Well, not sitting, not sleeping under the same tree twice, or not having, you know, blankets or something. Chanting under a waterfall. Yeah. Cold waterfall. Standing under a cold waterfall. Yeah. So, Mahayana, the Bodhisattva had a different goal. The goal of the Bodhisattva was not to enter nirvana until all beings have entered nirvana. So you become the last one, right? And so you don't mind being born over and over again. the Hinayana practitioner wants to end it all, you know, hope I never get back here again.

[20:00]

There's a lot of suffering, you know, in India in those days, probably like Syria. But the idea was to, there's always this idea of rebirth in India. and just carried over into Buddhism. So the monks didn't want to, you know, the idea was to not be reborn again and come back. But for the Bodhisattva, the vow is to be reborn over and over again until everyone is saved, is the word. But that understanding has many different ways to be perceived. So that's a big question.

[21:03]

Like the Tibetans, they took that on completely, rebirth. And then they pick out the tukus, you know, this little kid, you know, as their reincarnation. That's Tibet. That's an extreme practice that they just took it on. But others don't take that on. So, you know, maybe with a grain of salt or think about it in different ways. Like, you know, we're born and die moment by moment. So nobody knows, even though we all know nobody knows. It's up for grabs. But Buddha never talked about rebirth, right? Well, I don't know. Reincarnation is not the same as rebirth. He talked about his former life.

[22:04]

Yes, we think. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's right. The Jataka tales are all full of Buddha's former life. Big, thick book. The Jataka tales. But these tales, when I was a deer, you know, I... That's not what Ron was... He was saying sutras, like when he talks about his enlightenment experience, he talks about how he saw all his past lives. Yes. Whatever that means. Yes. So, it's, you know, it's a big subject which you can play with. not to create karma.

[23:05]

Yes, that's right. Yeah, I've talked about that before. So it's not some special power. It's the power that we all have. But that's different from reincarnation. What he did say was that you are always... The reason... Something can't arise from nothing. The reason you're here is because you've always been here. And when the appropriate circumstances arise with the right conditions, you arise as you. And when they're no longer coming together, you become one with Well, here's how he explained it, also, when he talked about eating noodles.

[24:13]

So when you eat, you have, you know, the noodles are here, the rice is there, the vegetables are here, and they're all, you know, what they are. And then as soon as you eat them, they all enter the darkness and disintegrate. and the chemical, and turn into, transform, the chemical nature transforms and takes different, it enters the darkness and becomes part of everything else and goes where it's needed. So it's all one piece. This is Mahayana understanding. It's all one piece. It's not that I, you know, sojourn, becomes sojourn again.

[25:20]

That doesn't happen. But everything is everything already. Everything participates as itself. And everything is myself already. But we think we're all separate. We are all separate, but we're all the same as well. That's the whole point of Mahayana, is that as well as being a so-called self, this basic Buddhism, the self is everywhere. But it's also a specific thing. It's specific and also everywhere. So Suzuki Roshi would say, Don't worry about dying because there's no place you can go. There's no place that you're not, and there's no place you can go. It's just like a ball of worms, a big ball of worms.

[26:26]

They're all wiggling and changing, but it's all the same shape. For a ball of worms, it's a ball. But for us, maybe it's a ball. It's just everything is becoming everything else. That's this transformation. It's called transformation. Everything is becoming everything else constantly. So what's next? It's not that there's nothing next. Then this thing is nothing. With all being, all things being, it's not separate. Equal. All things are being equal. Also time, can you address, would you say that time also is all equal?

[27:27]

Yes, it's equal and time is both continuous and discontinuous at the same time. Discontinuous time means one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock. We partition it. Continuous time is just now. It's always now. There's nothing else but now. Ever. But we divide it into pieces. And then we have this time and this time and this time. But it's all the same. It's just two sides of time. And there are other sides of time as well, but these are basic sides of time. I guess what I'm getting at, when they talk about past lives, is it concurrent existence? I mean, is there a way of looking at it that is non-linear? Yes. It's not linear.

[28:29]

It's not a line. We just see it as a line because we think the world is flat. But as Dogen says, a fish thinks it's a palace, whatever. But, you know, we're afraid of losing something. It's hard for us to really, because we want to think that we'll never die. But it's true. We'll never die. So what? Because we're never born. It's just continuation. Everything is continuing in different forms. If we think the same form is going to continue, I mean, that's, crazy, even though we think it's sane.

[29:38]

Things do not continue that way. Everything continues as a different form, and we're afraid of losing our form, because we think this is the right form, because I love it, and I feel, you know, I have all this feeling. So feelings are really important. because it's the basis. Feeling is desire, arouses desire. Feeling and desire are like this. And so, desire is, desire, ill will, and delusion, right? Those are the three difficulties, I'll call them. Desire is, problem is that desire is the motivator for everything. Desire is the seed, is like the activity and the motivator for everything.

[30:45]

Without desire, you know, like we look at some old persons and they're senile, which means desire is poof, you know, not there. And so, You know, they just kind of don't, I'm sorry, I hope I don't get there, but. So, but desire is the hardest thing to deal with. Really hard to deal with, but it's considered minor problem because it's always with us, it's inherent, and so it's excusable. The results of desire are more excusable, according to Mahayana, and ill will is considered easier to deal with than desire.

[31:53]

because it's not inherent. And delusion is more inherent. I mean, it's like lack of understanding, which is the most difficult to deal with. So, Mahayana is more forgiving. If you break the rules in Hinayana, you're big consequences. If you break the rules in Mahayana, there's forgiveness, which has many different aspects. So, although there are rules in Mahayana, they're not taken as seriously. because sometimes rules don't cover everything. The law doesn't cover everything and it can be manipulated.

[33:04]

So, you know, sometimes if you see a man chasing a little girl or something, you know, and you have to do something, you might have to kill that person. And then in the Hinayana, you'll be killing somebody. But in the Mahayana, there's a reason. So it's more like the living precepts. The Mahayana calls the Hinayana precepts the dead precepts. And the Mahayana calls the living precepts, or the precepts that that are sensible for the situation, the living precepts. So that's kind of a difference between Mahayana and Hinayana. We say, well, what's Hinayana, you know? You're putting the Hinayana down, Mahayana's putting the Hinayana down all the time.

[34:07]

Well, that's because the Hinayana is dualistic in its basis. It doesn't take into account, it's like the letter of the law, whereas Mahayana is like the spirit of the law. And the spirit of the law includes the letter of the law, and the letter of the law should include the spirit of the law. Because the Mahayana, the monk, is dedicated to living with people, not isolated. Of course, at Mahayana monasteries, right? But basically, living with people and suffering the suffering of people, rather than excusing yourself from that. So excusing yourself from sharing the suffering is Hinayana way,

[35:13]

entering into the suffering of others is Mahayana way. That's the big difference. That's why the Hina is called the Hinayana and the Mahayana is called the Mahayana. Great. Hina meaning small. Maha, Prajnaparamita, meaning great, wide, open, including everybody. Narrow. Narrow, yes, narrow. Hinayana means narrow, yeah. So in China, they developed Bodhisattva precepts. Bodhisattva precepts include the 10 major precepts which we follow. plus 48 minor precepts.

[36:15]

The minor precepts are not so minor. Here's an example of minor precepts, of the Bodhisattva precepts. Let's see, let's start with the ninth minor precept prohibits failure to look after the sick. Whenever a disciple of the Buddha meets with anyone who is sick, he should constantly make offerings to that person just as he would a Buddha. Whether the person is one's parent, one's teacher, a member of the Sangha, or a disciple, is one with impaired faculties, or is afflicted with any of the manifold illnesses, one should make offerings and care for that person until he recovers. Of the eight fields of blessings, looking after the sick is the foremost. Hence, if a bodhisattva fails to look after the sick or if he directs hateful thoughts toward that individual and therefore refuses to rescue the individual, whether he is in a dwelling of the sangha, the city, the wilds, the mountains, forests, or along the road, he thereby violates this minor precept and commits a defiling offense.

[37:25]

The fifteenth minor precept prohibits biased or deviant teaching. Disciple of the Buddha must teach disciples of the Buddha, evil-minded externalists, the six types of close relatives, and good-knowing advisors, one and all, to receive and uphold the great vehicle, sutras and moral laws. He must teach them to understand the principles therein, causing them to bring forth the Bodhi resolve. to progress through the ten minds of advancement, the ten minds of development, and the ten vajra minds, so that in each of these thirty minds they understand the order and function of dharmas. Hence if a bodhisattva with evil or hateful intentions perversely offers instructions in the sutras and moral codes of the two vehicles, or the sound hearers, I'll explain that, or in the discourses of externalists and those of deviant views, he therefore thereby violates this minor precept and commits a defiling offense. If a bodhisattva with evil or hateful intentions perversely offers instructions in the sutras and moral codes of the two vehicles or the sound hearers, two vehicles are the, the sound hearers is a kind of,

[38:56]

explanation of the Shravakas. Actually, the Arhats, the Hinayanas, basically. I don't want to go into explaining the two vehicles, but if you read the Lotus Sutra, it does explain the two vehicles. The burning house, the parable of the burning house in the Lotus Sutra, where the house is burning and the kids, three kids are inside. And the father, you know, doesn't want to go into the building, but he entices them to come out of the building by saying, well, you know, I have a wonderful deer cart here, you know, why don't you come on out and take a look at it? And then he said, I have a wonderful goat cart here, why don't you come out and take a look at it? And then they have an ox cart, not actually an ox cart, Bullock. And so the Bullock is the deer cart and the goat cart, I think it's goat, are the two lower vehicles.

[40:10]

And so the Shravakas and Prachekabuddhas, Prachekabuddha is a Buddha who, an isolated Buddha, a kind of a hermit who doesn't, you know, help other people necessarily. And here, Shravaka is an arhat. So he says, come on out and take these vehicles and you'll enjoy it, you know. But for those people who want to get into the bullock cart, that's the Mahayana vehicle. So the Mahayana vehicle is always extolled over the other two vehicles. And the other two vehicles are like the Hinayana. And the spirit of it is that whatever suits you based on your mental disposition, you would choose one of those cards. You would choose one of those cards, yeah. That's right. The 38th minor precept prohibits failure to observe the proper order when sitting with the assembly.

[41:40]

A disciple of the Buddha must accord with Dharma by taking the proper place when sitting with the assembly. Those who first receive the precepts sit in front. Whereas those who later receive the precepts sit behind them, according to their order in which they receive the precepts, regardless of whether one is old or young. a bhikṣu or a bhikṣuṇī, a person of influence or noble status, a king, a prince, and so forth, to a eunuch or a slave, one must still observe this regulation, allowing those who first receive the precepts to sit in front and those who later receive the precepts to sit behind them, according to the order in which they receive the precepts. Do not be like senseless followers of externalist ways who base their order on age or who have no order at all and thus sit in who base their order on ranks like the military or caste system. Within my Buddhadharma, those of foremost position sit in front and those of lesser position sit at the back.

[42:44]

Hence, if a bodhisattva sits out of order, he therefore violates this minor precept and commits a defilement." So, it's worded rather strictly, but this is how you keep order. In other words, there's no favoritism. totally beyond favoritism, said, this is the order of when you were ordained. And that's how, what the seating arrangement is. That's not because we like you better or because, you know, you have, you're good looking or something. Or I've done wonderful things. When Dogen went to China, he had to sit way in the back, behind everybody. So we don't do that. Suzuki Roshi didn't. We're too mixed up. We don't conform to any of those rules. What we do in Tassajara, in the monastic life, so this is not a monastery.

[43:50]

You have to remember, this is for the monks. A fellow who was coordinator for Thich Nhat Hanh in San Francisco Zen Center was a big promoter of Thich Nhat Hanh until they sat down at a table, they were eating, and the monks were given preferential seating over the lay people. And that so irritated him. The monks were given preferential seating over the lay people. Because he was a lay person, he was asked to sit in the back, and the monks were sitting up front, even though he was more involved than Thich Nhat Hanh. And it so irritated him that he basically just quit. That's too bad. He wasn't ready yet. That's right. So one has to have some humility, right? Yes, it's a great teaching. It's really a great teaching. When you have, when you, when there's something that blocks you, that's a great teaching.

[44:55]

It reminds me of, you know, when we had like 60 people sitting in sushis and People sometimes who had to sit on the floor or had to sit up in the other building were really annoyed. It felt like they were missing the action. Even though the action was just sitting still. That's kind of what you're talking about. Yeah. When you meet some kind of obstacle in your mind, that's a great place to be. So these are interesting rules, all different kinds of rules. Some are very logical, some are kind of dumb. What I would like us to do eventually in this class is to come up with our own minor precepts to write down what we think.

[46:03]

According to, Suzuki Roshi said this to me, he said, I think we should write our own precepts. You should write your own precepts, minor precepts, which major precepts are pretty universal. You don't mess with those. But the most minor precepts are actually the most interesting. And, you know, I have a whole list of them that I've written down. a long time ago, about various things. I should have them somewhere. So anyway, I wanted to present to you these two signs, the Mahayana sign and the Hinayana sign.

[47:29]

Now, the Mahayana precepts of the 250 or so are practically the same for Hinayana and Mahayana. But in Japan, Well, the 48 minor precepts, which I just read to you, some of it, that's China. And so those precepts came to Japan. And in Japan, everything's different. The Japanese, you know, they live in their island and they have their own ways of doing things. But, you know, the two prominent schools in Japan in Dogen's time, the Tendai school and the Shingon school. Shingon school is kind of like Vajrayana, Japanese version of Vajrayana, where there are secret practices and the mandalas and all that, and esoteric Buddhism.

[48:39]

And zentai is like eclectic. They have all the practices of Buddhism. And Eisai, Japanese monk, Eisai went to Japan to see if he could get the Zen authorization from China. So he went to China, and he got the Chan, Zen authors that came back as the Zen monk. And Keninji, which is the oldest Rinzai temple in Japan, he founded that as a Zen temple. But he couldn't establish himself completely because the Tendai school said, well, we also have Zen. Why do you have to have a separate Zen sect? And so he never quite could do that.

[49:41]

But Dogen went after he did with Esai's disciple, Myogen, to China and got the Soto Zen precepts from his teacher, Rujing. And then he came back and established his own sect, his own school, which was difficult because the Tendai and all those other people, you know, they had great wars. Unfortunately, Buddhist wars where the schools were, you know, really burning each other's temples down and all that. So, but the Tendai school developed this 16 precepts. They got, you know, in the past in China and in Japan, I don't know about India, but registering with everybody, all monks had to be registered with the emperor, with the bureaucracy, and permitted to be ordained and so forth. So, the Tendai school developed the 16 precepts.

[50:49]

They said, we don't really need all the rest. And that kind of permeated through Japan, and Dogen took that up. So, he said, we don't need all that. We don't need to have all those precepts. We just, because precepts do not come from our, from outside. to bind us, they come from inside to free us. But it doesn't mean that we abandon the 250 precepts, because the 250 precepts, it's like, 250 precepts is like by rote, precepts by rote, and impossible to follow all of them completely.

[51:51]

But that's like a foundation You know that they're there. You know that there's something there. It's not just all your own invention. Matter of fact, you can't invent anything. And then there are the precepts, which, the precepts of emptiness, which is just Buddha nature. It's like the precepts of intuition, the precepts that are already deeply embedded in your DNA. And then there's the Bodhisattva precepts, which is sandwiched in between those two. It's like three layers. The 250 precepts that I wrote, Buddha nature, intuitive precepts where you actually know what to do, if you pay attention, if you trust yourself.

[53:01]

And then there's what actually happens when you meet circumstances. Those are the living precepts. So that was Dogen's understanding. And it's my understanding, but especially in Japan. The Japanese are more intuitive. They're not so intellectual. They're very intuitive. I mean, it's like, if I say the opposite of what they mean, often, and you kind of read each other's minds, often. Very subtle. If you study with a Japanese teacher, it's kind of very neat. It's really quite wonderful, but you have to be able to not take everything literally. And when you study Buddhism, I mean Zen, you don't take anything literally. Everything means, the meaning is, you're a vehicle for the meaning, but you're not necessarily saying everything that you mean or think, or in a way that, the culture is just, you know,

[54:21]

structured that way. People know what everybody else is thinking in some way. But our culture is structured in a different way. Structured in a different way. So the people that studied with Suzuki Hiroshi have a certain kind of understanding of what he meant. And then as the disciples become older and die away, that becomes weaker and weaker. And then our culture kind of takes over in some way. But to have, like for me, to not do other things, I'm just being a kind of conveyor for Suzuki Roshi's style so that we can understand it in some way, hopefully, get some taste of Suzuki.

[55:36]

It's just natural to me. And sometimes people are puzzled, you know. They say, oh, he's this way or he's that way or something. I don't innovate some American way that will innovate by itself. As the influence of Japan grows less and less strong, but I think it's important to keep it going as long as possible.

[56:15]

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