As you all know, we have a stone statue of Shakyamuni Buddha here in this meditation hall. And we think it's from Afghanistan. I was in an oriental art store once on Union Street and the owner of the store said that down the block in an oriental carpet store that there was a statue, a very beautiful stone statue of the Buddha that I might want to look at.

[01:03]

So I went down the block found the place and went inside and there was this statue. And the owner said that he had another one in the store. And so he took me and showed me that one too. And that statue is the one that is now in the city center, Buddha Hall. And he... I think maybe that they were smuggled into the country. And he started playing with the lighting on the statue, the second statue, the track lighting, to give me a look at it.

[02:14]

Then he said something about it being the real thing. Coke after Coke. Anyway, I went back to Zen Center. I told Richard Baker and other people about the statues, and so Zen Center bought them both. So now they're here. They may be very, very old. They may be from the Gandharan period, since they are Gandharan-style statues. The reason why I'm bringing this up is because I was thinking of the seat that the Buddhas are sitting on. And I remember at some point looking through Buddhist art books, I once saw a stone statue of Buddha's seat.

[03:23]

It had a seat, a chair. And this chair was empty. Just a chair. At the base of the chair was a lotus pedestal. On the lotus pedestal, I think there were two footprints. This statue, or this sculpture, it said, I think underneath it, something like, an iconographic representation of the Buddha, a non-iconographic representation of the Buddha. So there was no icon sitting in the seat.

[04:27]

It was an empty seat. But I think I felt at that time that that was perhaps the most moving sculpture I'd ever seen of the Buddha. Although I had I think I'd seen ones I liked very much. This was the most moving I felt at the time. In the empty seat I could see I couldn't see. In the empty seat I felt all that the Buddha is beyond what we can see in the beautiful statue of the Buddha. And I thought, yeah, that's really a wonderful way to portray the Buddha as an empty seat. I think I'm bringing that up because of another image that came to me of Buddha's seat and that sometimes someone gets up into Buddha's seat and sits in it.

[06:05]

And then when someone is sitting in Buddha's seat, sometimes disciples of Buddha come and with the seat that has an occupant, that has someone sitting in it. And they do a kind of theater around the seat. And the one who sits in the seat speaks from the seat and acts from the seat. But there's a, it's a dynamic between

[07:09]

between the two sides. One side is that when the seat's empty, it's very moving. And the other side is that when the seat's occupied, you can interact with it in ways, well, the seat can talk. If you put a person in the seat, the seat can speak. And you can remember what the seat said or how the seat spoke through the person. But it's also nice to have the seat empty because when you put someone in the seat, it's like you think the person's talking rather than the seat's using the person. So there's a dynamic. Which way should we go? Empty seat or occupied seat? Silent seat or talking seat? They each have opportunities.

[08:14]

In many Zen books, you read the beginning of the talk, it says, such and such a teacher ascended the seat. That means they went up to the hall and they got up in the seat and they sat in the seat. And when they sat in the seat, sometimes they were silent. the first case of the Book of Serenity, the Buddha ascended the seat. The Buddha ascended Buddha's seat and didn't say anything. But since the Buddha didn't say anything, Manjushri struck the gavel and said, look, the teachings like this In some ways, it's pure for the Buddha to not be on the seat at all. And if the Buddha gets on the seat, to not say anything.

[09:25]

For the seat to let the person be quiet. The word cathedral, the big building, the cathedral, is based on the word cathedra. Cathedral means the chair or the seat. Cathedral is made of two other words in Latin, kata, which means down, and irja, or something like that, which means seat. Kathedra means down in the seat. In the center of the cathedral is the seat where somebody sits or something sits. And there is an expression called ex cathedra, which means from the seat, to speak from the seat, ex cathedra.

[10:48]

But this is, like I say, it's a tricky business speaking from the seat. One time I did a workshop with a yoga teacher and at the end of the retreat we had a question and answer session. He and I talked with each other with the group and afterwards he said that the conversation was like having a press conference with God. And someone said, yeah, that's because one of you was speaking ex cathedra. One of you felt that he was placed on the seat and speaking from there. But in some sense, maybe it wasn't appropriate at that time to be speaking ex cathedra, that I was speaking ex cathedra. So I'm wondering about sitting in the seat and speaking ex cathedra.

[12:16]

I'm wondering, is it appropriate? We have a seat right here that I'm sitting on. But this seat, although it has a little separation from the rest of the seats, and therefore it can be moved to the center or any other place in the room, it's on the same level as all the other tans.

[13:26]

Some people say that in the Soto Zen meditation hall, everybody's on the same level. If we'd raised the center tons, that would be true. But the idea is, anyway, everyone's on the same level, and that everybody's on the level of Buddha. That's what some people say. But we have some other chairs here at Tassajara too. We have one really big chair over in the kaisando, which looks more like a chair than a tan. Some of you have seen it. We're going to be pulling it out of storage and using it this month as a chair, as a seat. And put somebody in the seat and imbue the person.

[14:33]

I should say, indue the person. Did you know that there's a word called indue? E-N-D-U-E, which means to confer quality upon. Imbue means to saturate with color or strongly impress upon. There's another word called indu, which means more like what I thought imbu meant. I found this word indu in the Visuddhimagga, the path of purification, where it talks about someone who is indued with loving kindness, who is indued with compassion. I thought, did they misspell it? I looked up indu, and it's right. It's someone who has the quality of loving-kindness instilled or offered or installed in them.

[15:35]

So we have a practice in Zen tradition to put people in seats and then endu them with authority, to endu them with precepts, to transmit something to them. And then if people, that's the in-doing them. Then people can recognize the in-do-ment and say, we see this quality has been in-do-ed upon this person. And this is sometimes done in what we call mountain seat ceremony. Where we invite someone to get up on the seat and speak from the seat. we invite someone to ascend the seat, which is called shinsan, to ascend the seat or ascend the mountain, and then speak from the seat and interact with the person sitting in the seat.

[16:45]

It's part of the tradition, but what about the empty seat? which is so pure and there's no confusion, a person with seat, a Buddha with the body, a person. And yet, it's nice to have Buddha in the body of a person. Those are two sides. What body do you want in the seat? Is there somebody you want to play with? Is there somebody you want to speak from the seat to you? Wonderful things can happen, but do we want them to?

[18:00]

It's dangerous. There's some danger in putting someone in the seat. We have another chair here at Tassajara which isn't so big. It's a black lacquer, I think, isn't it? And it has kind of like some gold-looking decorations on it. In Japanese, it's called, I think, kyoku roku. Is that what you call it? Kyoku roku? What does kyoku mean? Correct. Huh? Correct. Correct? Oh, crooked? Crooked. It folds. It folds up. And it's got curved hands on it, and it's got a nice, I think, green satin seat and foot pad. Sometimes when people see that seat, they get nervous.

[19:13]

It seems so decorative, so fancy. It gives them a tip-off to what might happen. Something fancy might happen. Watch out. Anyway, I had this little daydream of putting that seat here in this room and asking you, do you want somebody to sit in that seat? And that was the dream. I didn't go any further of having somebody say, no, thank you, or yes, please. And I had another daydream of someone sitting in the seat and this wonderful interaction occurring around the seat. But how do you get someone in the seat in the first place?

[20:26]

I was wondering, how is that going to happen? I didn't see how it would happen. Now I'm sitting in this seat, as I said, it's on the same level as all the other seats, so I'm just talking to you Buddha to Buddha, okay? Those of you who are on the floor now, it's just a temporary situation for most of you. You can sublimate your position soon. Sublimate means to rise, raise up, uplift. You can move from a low altitude to medium altitude person without going through a liquid state. that's the chemical meaning of sublimate is to go from a solid to a gas without passing through a liquid and also to go from a gas to a solid without passing through a liquid.

[21:42]

About nineteen years ago I was standing outside the zendo here by the stairs in front of the dormitory. And I saw a little girl on the steps. And I saw her mother over by the kitchen. And they saw each other. And they hadn't seen each other, the little girl and the mother hadn't seen each other for two months. They had been separated. And now they were reunited and they saw each other. And it was a warm, sunny spring day. 1980. And I thought I saw the air between them turn to gold.

[22:59]

Like gold dust. And they kind of almost ran towards each other through that golden particle environment. And then they embraced. The mother was so happy to be back in touch with the daughter with the person she thought was her daughter and the daughter was so happy to be back together with the person she thought was her mother and then a little while later they found out that the person that they were thought they were embracing was not the person that they were embracing that it was a mistake somebody had changed

[24:08]

The old mother was not there anymore and the old daughter was not there anymore. Then they started to struggle with each other to find out who it was that they were embracing. I have the feeling that this is... this is what religion's about. Namely, how do we deal with this contradiction of the person we're embracing being our own flesh and blood and also being different from us and not being

[25:11]

our own flesh and blood? How do we reconcile this world where we seem to be different and the world where we're not different? How do we reconcile the world where somebody's sitting in a chair And we're all sitting in a chair. Or nobody's sitting in a chair. Of course, one way to do it is just go off deep in the mountains where there's nobody else and no chairs. Because somehow, when we hug a tree, it's usually not that disappointing.

[26:15]

because we don't expect that much from a tree. Usually the bark feels pretty much like we thought it would. And the way the wind moves the leaves, the way they fall to the ground, It's, you know, not that big a deal whether the leaf flips this way or that way. But with a person, a slight change in nuance of voice makes a big difference to us. A little crinkle around the edge of the mouth or above the eyebrows makes a big difference. We can tell it's not who we thought it was supposed to be. So there's a seat in this world where Buddha sits and there's a seat where mother sits and where father sits and where lover sits and where daughter sits and son sits

[28:21]

What are we going to do about it all? How are we going to respond? How are we going to live? How are we going to invite beings into the seats in our mind and body? How are we going to take our seat? And what is our seat? Are we going to be father, mother, Buddha? How's that going to happen? Well, I think one thing that's going to happen, the way it's going to happen is very gently and carefully. Just like this practice period, you noticed how what a delicate issue it was to invite this monk to sit in the seat called the first seat, the shuso, means first seat.

[29:52]

We had to go through a process to get him to sit here. And now we continue to go through the process of him sitting here and helping him sit here. and sit here and be the first seat monk. So, how do we invite people into these important seats in our life? How do we recognize their reservations and be patient with them when they're not sure that they can fulfill the responsibility? And how do we also expect them to fulfill the responsibility, expect them, support them to fulfill the responsibility, interact with them so that they can fulfill their responsibility?

[31:04]

So I find the things that I brought up this morning really interesting. To me it's very, lots of contradictions and subtleties around this. Because empty seats are wonderful. They have a lot going for them. And filled seats are wonderful too. So it's not exactly better or worse. It's just different opportunities with different situations. You look like you understand this rather oblique conversation.

[33:32]

And yet you look like me, like I feel, in that we don't exactly know how to proceed from here. I don't know how to proceed. But this is an issue which I'm concerned about, which I'm sharing with you. An issue which I think pervades our psyche. And we can't really get away from it. So how do we become intimate with the seats? The seats in our mind and body. Is this talk about authority? Is it about authority? It is about authority, yes.

[34:38]

And you know the word authority comes from the root to make. So authority is related to creation. It has to do with what kind of a world we make. Is it going to be a world which will recognize that we're making it or not? Once there's making then there's authority in the process of making. So authority is authority is very closely related to the seat because you make a seat and if you put somebody into it you make that happen. You have a new And then they build cathedrals around the seats, right? They build a big building around the seat. So what do you think about the authority business, Mr. Brooks?

[35:49]

Yeah. If a man was the only remaining human being on earth, would he have any need to occupy the seat? Well, in one sense I would say no, in another sense I would say he would always be in it. He would be, you know, he would be the authority on the planet about, you know, what it was to be a man. So there wouldn't be much debate about whether he was the world's leading authority on various things.

[36:53]

So then an aspect of authority is agreement of other people. An aspect of authority is agreement of other people. Yes. The issue of authority and making, is it like you were asking, being a practice career, asking us if we want to train or not so much? Instead of us asking you to dispense the learning of teaching, just ask it to help us train as a group. I'm nodding my head because that all makes sense to me, but was that just kind of a statement?

[38:16]

Yeah, that's fine. I feel that it is a question of clarity, but I think perhaps one of my interventions is a question of choice. Just being able to trust the person in the seat to say what comes to him or her. My impression is that, I don't quite know why you brought this up, but there seems to be a lot of confusion about who to trust and who has authority. What I've noticed in South America, which I don't notice so much in other countries, is that people who have authority are not necessarily older.

[39:27]

In other words, seniority isn't a big issue here. Normally, I'm used to people who are younger having some sort of respect for people who are older. But here it seems that The moment you know how to do something, like whether it's ring a bell, if you know how to do orioke, then you're in a position of clarity. And it's a bit confusing for me. Yeah, or another thing in America is that if you can make a computer, you're an authority. I hope it's okay to mention that there's this person named Steve Jobs that used to practice Zen. You know Steve Jobs? You know that name? He kind of invented the Apple computer. So he practiced Zen and he told his teacher that he was enlightened. And his teacher said, prove it.

[40:29]

And he brought the computer. So he's kind of an authority in that sense that he made this computer and started this company called Apple. So yeah, I think there is something like if you can make something, there's some authority in that. I think that's both a danger in America and and sort of, what do you call it, an encouragement for people to be creative, because if they're creative, they can... they're rewarded for it. They're treated as though they knew something, as though they had some authority, even though they might be a kid. But there's a drawback to that, too, is that you might not have the wisdom to deal with your creativity. So then you might become extremely wealthy and and not have the certain other kinds of background to know how to deal with it.

[41:36]

So a person can have authority in one realm and in another area not be in touch with creation and mix them together in one person. It's hard to know where you trust a person and where you don't. Where they have authority and where you give them authority or you support them as an author And while you say, this is not your realm, stop there. Did you have your hand raised? You're kind of an author, aren't you, young person? You write poems sometimes, right? Yeah. I'm not sure I understand the ex cathedra idea. As far as, I was starting to think of dopa-sahaja, and are you speaking ex cathedra and dopa-sahaja?

[42:43]

Then I was thinking, is it really so cut dry, ex cathedra, as opposed to not ex cathedra? Is it cut and dried? Yes, speaking from the seat and not speaking from the seat. I think you can be sitting in the seat and sometimes not be speaking ex cathedra, or you can be sitting in the seat and speaking ex cathedra, and you can also be just in some informal situation and still be speaking ex cathedra. Like I say in that thing where the person said he felt like he was having a press conference with God, maybe then it shouldn't have been ex cathedra, but it was. It's a it's kind of like when certain causes and conditions come together, a person, well, you know, a person takes on what we call sometimes a charm, you know, or a charisma.

[43:46]

But sometimes a person can, or a glamour, you know, glamour is like originally applied to like sorcerers and shamans that they somehow seem to be Bigger than life, even though they're only five feet tall, they seem like they're eight feet tall. And that has something to do with sitting in the seat and people give you something or you do something to help people give you something. I'm bringing this up because I had this kind of vision of the seat and many people interacting around the seat but then I thought well how do you

[44:59]

How do you establish the seat? And I guess I want to throw this out or set this out before the community, this issue, and see what happens. Not, in other words, not assuming authority or not assuming the seat. When you're a Catholic, you have to believe it. He said, if the Pope makes an ex cathedra statement and you're a Catholic, you have to believe it. You don't have to believe it, you're asked to believe it. You're asked to believe it. Well, somehow, some people got together and decided, and then they maybe decided again and again, they decided how to hear the Pope.

[46:10]

At different points in history, they were suggesting different ways of hearing the Pope. And so, in some sense, I think each of you gets to decide what you hear and what's the best attitude to have for what you hear when people sit in different seats. I think I'd like you to participate in the conference, in the convention of deciding what kind of a world we're going to have here. Yes. Yes. Partly saying, asking to be able to recognize what is the seat and what is the person and when is one in one's own seat and not in one's seat? All of that. And do you want to have a seat or seats in your life? And do you want people to occupy it? Occupy the seats or seat?

[47:12]

And do you want to interact with a person in that situation? What do you want? You know, and... I think you understand the issue, but I don't know how you feel about it or what you want to do. Yes? When you were talking earlier about a person with authority who was given authority and they have authority to a certain point where you would say, well, you don't have authority in that area. It brought up for me the issue of power. I wonder if you might differentiate between authority and power. I think that, for example, the way I understand Buddha is that Buddha has authority and there is great power in the function of Buddha, but Buddha doesn't possess the power.

[48:32]

So part of what people give a person authority, I think it might be that they assume, not assume, but they trust that they can give this person the authority and the power that then flows through the person, they won't be possessive of it. And if a person switches over to being possessive of the power which flows through their body and mind from the seat they sit in, then we don't trust it so much, or we feel uncomfortable then. I think that power and authority are very closely related. But I think in Buddhism that the Buddha doesn't possess the power for herself. And yet the Buddha does great power in Buddha. Yes.

[49:35]

Yes. We have a forum specifically to study the question of the seat, shosan-sen. Right. So I wonder, under what conditions you would be willing to do a shosan-sen and look at these questions? So she said that we have a form, a ceremonial form called shosan ceremony to study this question. And so the shosan ceremony is, or some version of the shosan ceremony is the vision I had. And so this talk is an exploration of the situation of the Shosan ceremony, you could say.

[50:37]

And you're saying, under what conditions would I be willing to? I've been thinking about this for some weeks. I heard rumors that you weren't willing to do Shosan ceremonies. Yeah. You know, because people might not want it or something like that. So I'm asking now, under what conditions you would be willing to do a Shosan ceremony? Because it seems to me to talk about it without the dread, without... to talk about it is one way to do it but to directly ask putting ourselves in the situation might be easier to understand yeah I can see I can see the merit of just going ahead and doing it and seeing how it goes but at the same time I'm asking these questions prior to doing it

[51:41]

just to share some of the issues, which I think you already know about, but just make sure that they're all open about what's going on there. When you bring up the issues, it's very evocative. It's that sense of currents and shadows, big stuff. And it's true there are big issues whether to put someone in that seat or allow someone to be in that seat. Yes. I'm really confused. I feel like I'm on drugs or something. It's like I'm missing whatever is happening here. I hear all this talk and I can't find the center to it. It's like something beating around the bush.

[52:47]

So I want the first question I had is, are we having this little lecture just to talk about whether we have any jokes on it? Well, it's possible that you are missing something. You know, sometimes that does happen, that people miss things. But to try to make it into something simple like we're just discussing whether we should have a shosan ceremony or not, that would be making it too simple. But one way to translate this into, one way to translate it into the causes and conditions for this might be to say that I had a vision of a shosan ceremony and I wondered how it could happen. I did have that kind of vision. But I'm not so much just directly asking you, do you want to have a shosan ceremony?

[53:54]

Because actually the vision I had was not a shosan ceremony, like as something we ordinarily do as part of the practice period, because in the last many practice periods I've done in Tassajara, I have not had a shosan ceremony. And that was because some people didn't want it. And I hesitate to have ceremonies that people don't want to have. The other part of my mind is that I pictured a series of Shosan ceremonies. In other words, I had this picture of, rather than having this lecture format, to have multiple meetings, Dharma meetings, Dharma events, where that pattern would be it would be more like interactive than just giving a talk and people sitting in their seats. But people would be on their feet, you know, able to move, and it would be more like a dance than a talk.

[54:55]

So I had that picture of a wonderful interactive Dharma event with or without a chair. So that's part of what I'm exploring is some quite different way of interacting. So it's not so much just about are we going to have a shosan ceremony? But I'm also just raising some of the evocative, colorful, shadowy possibilities around all this stuff. Because I don't want to have a dance and then have some people be wallflowers. Or maybe we do have a dance and we say it's okay that some people are going to be wallflowers. And some people are really good at dancing and so they All that stuff is part of what I'm bringing up here. I don't want to have a shosan ceremony if it's going to split the community into those who want to do it and those who don't.

[55:57]

I don't want to have a shosan ceremony because it's a matter of course. But I would like to have, I actually would like to have some different ways of meeting than we've done so far in this practice period or any practice periods. some really creative ways of us interacting. And the question is, what form would that be good at? What would be good? And I'm bringing that up now. I could bring it up later, but it just happens to be now, so I'm bringing it up now. Yes? Back to what you were saying at the beginning about being invited to take a seat. Yes. I've noticed, in a way, you do have this kind of delicate practice for inviting someone to take a seat, and that sometimes when the time is up, the seat just disappears. There's no comparable delicacy at the end.

[57:00]

Everyone invites you to take the seat, and then the last day the jikido takes your chair away, basically. So I was sitting and thinking about that, and how that's a, I suppose, is that a form of renunciation? And then, is it really a form of renunciation to take the seat at the beginning? Yeah. What do you think? I hope it is. You hope it is at the beginning? Well, since the kitchen's left, maybe we should stop after one more question, comment. About your vision, I don't exactly remember your words, but I imagine you were talking about a seat that had different people, more than one person. That's what I thought I was hearing. That kind of sparked my imagination.

[58:02]

Actually, I thought part of my daydream was having a seat and saying, does anybody want to sit in it? And then the question is, well, you know, does anybody just go sit in it? Maybe so. Whoever wants to sit in it, sit in it and see what happens. That's part of it, yeah. That was one scenario. Various people go sit in the seat, try it out for a while. Yeah. But then, you know, are people up to play that game? And I thought, yeah, that might be interesting. Just leave the seat open and say, who wants to sit in it? And then now what do we do? Yes? It's a ceremony where usually some practice leader sits in the seat, like a portable seat that we come and put in the middle of the room, and people come and ask questions.

[59:11]

And oftentimes it's a formal way of doing it. Short questions and short answers, interchanges. And usually everybody does it. And sometimes they're really great. Yes? Is your hand over there? Yeah. I guess I wanted to just call up to me. It seems like when somebody's invited, when we invite somebody to sit in the seat, that not only do we induce some responsibility onto that person, but I think it's our own responsibility to take for the invitation, to have given the invitation. It seems like there's a balance there, to not... We're all players. We all have responsibility in those positions that we take.

[60:16]

Right. Yes? It seems to me that you've been out of your seat for a few weeks, and that we've all experienced whatever we've experienced about that. Yes. And that perhaps some of the troubles come from not having really put you in that seat to begin with. reacting against authority in some habitual way, as we hadn't really felt that we had participated in the Vatican City. Mm-hmm. So it feels like this is a time for me, the Vatican City, to seek and remove that. It is for me. Mm-hmm.

[61:17]

Since we've all had the experience of being not being able to look at these things. Mm-hmm. Yes. I've read some medium and read about archetypes, so this is definitely something I think about. Yes. I was talking with Linda about figuring out what parents, and I was thinking about how sometimes I look like a parent sitting with a guarantee, and other times I don't talk to me if I don't. And I've definitely been thinking a lot about this since my girlfriend, Steve, and with that, well, my sister. And I've also thought about, there's senior people here at Zen Center who don't sit in a seat with me. I look at them and I just see them as a practitioner, not necessarily someone who I consider a lucky person. I mean, you sit in that seat with me, right? I mean, I'd be happy to have a showstone ceremony.

[62:19]

I'd find that lively. And I'm curious why we're discussing this now. I mean, I have to agree with Susan when we were like, there's human meat, animal meat. Is it just because it's on your mind, in the back of the community, and it's blowing your face here? Yeah. And, you know, I could have not done this, but there would have been, you would have gotten a, what do you call it, a counterfeit meat. If I just talked about something like, okay, now I'll talk about X. What I actually was thinking of the last night of just, I just thought of bringing a chair in, last period of Zazen, putting it in there, and just having a Shosan ceremony without anybody being prepared for it or anything. But I thought, well, it's probably too much. Probably too much.

[63:19]

So I hesitated. So that's where I'm at, you know, is thinking about just coming back and immediately interacting with you. But then I think, well, wait a minute. Were they ever up for that? You know? So that's sort of where I'm at. And... And this is Sesshin, so I shouldn't be bringing this up, because it's kind of so strange and hard to understand. But, you see, that's what I am, is I'm this way. And the way I am is difficult to deal with sometimes, like particularly always now it's difficult to deal with. But I'm coming back and saying, you know, can I just right away start being myself again, or do we need several days to get used to it?

[64:20]

Of me giving you something that's more expectable, something more, you know, normal, like giving you Dharma talk when it says Dharma talk, rather than raise all this strange, difficult stuff, which just happens to be what comes out of my mouth when I don't say what I think would be easy for you to listen to. So that's why this kind of inappropriate talk happened, because this is kind of how I am. Fair enough. When I did a practice period with you three years ago, you asked me at the beginning, I think you asked everyone yourself, I've heard, you accepted me as a teacher for the practice period, and I wasn't asked that for this practice. Is that something you used to ask people? Yeah, but this practice period, I guess, as you say, you didn't get asked that. It's a bureaucratic slip-up. Yes?

[65:30]

Did I give it up? Well, when you say give it up, I think basically... I think, yeah, I give it up all the time. Huh? Then it comes back, right. So my job is to give it up if it ever happens, if I ever happen to be offered the seat. Is that what you mean by renunciation? Yeah. I renounce it as soon as it's offered. So it's a little weird to bring in a chair because, like, you're... Yeah, it looks like I'm bringing it myself, so how can I bring the chair in? I have the idea of the chair being there and us having the Shosan ceremony around the chair with somebody sitting in it. I don't care who. I really don't care who. But anyway, it could be Rozzy. To me, that would be plenty of fun if she would be comfortable sitting in it.

[66:38]

It would be lots of fun. You have to make it a little bit bigger and put some food up on it or something. But if she sat there and we interacted with her in that chair, I think it would be lots of, it would be interesting evening. You know? And, but for me to put it in there and me to sit in it, it seems like, well, how does that happen? Anyway, it could happen. Someone could renounce the seat, bring it in and sit in it. But I, for me, it didn't happen that way last night. There's two of them. One's too big to bring. And the other one's just right. You can bring it whenever you want to. Yes, yes? My reservations with Shosen ceremonies have been recast.

[67:40]

It seems to me that maybe a third of the questions are kind of silly. That's okay, because I like silly, but the others are really serious. And out of the really serious questions, they take on the look of, or the sound of, like koans. It just didn't seem really... I mean, I always like your answers, but the questions themselves seem like not really our form of teaching, the way that we work with students. It always seems to me sad. So what you're talking about, doing something more free or something different, it seems to me, and possibly opening up to other people sitting in the seat, I wonder maybe you have what to talk to around the issue, let's say, from the reality, and just kind of focusing around questions on a particular topic.

[68:45]

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so this is part of the... It's dangerous, you know? Some danger there that some people will feel uncomfortable with what happened, right? No, he didn't say that, I don't think. Yes? So this is a suggestion that I think... You asked earlier, you know, that you'd like to know how people feel. What maybe people could stop now, how they feel, you know, just Vicki. Yeah, I'd give everything to Vicki. And I wanted to say how I feel out loud, because I'd like to see a show from the ceremony with you, and I'd also like to see, and then, you know, maybe some kind of variation on the show. It's sad, but anyway. Yes?

[70:00]

What do you see as the danger of somebody being uncomfortable? The danger? Well, maybe that they... It depends on what they're uncomfortable about. I think the main danger would be if their faith was hurt in any way, if it eroded their trust in the community or the teacher or the teaching. That would be the danger, that they felt like people were being disrespectful of the form or something like that. Yes? And is having a Shosan ceremony part of the ceremony? It's one of the forms. It's a ceremony that we often do, yes. So it's a normal ceremony in Soto Zen to do it, yes. Because everybody, a lot of people that I speak to seem to...

[71:02]

to at least trust the form, or at least accept the form, that is part of the form, there seems to be a sudden question about, well, you know, they forget that it's a form, and then they want to have this kind of democratic, what is the better word, idea of whether whoever sits in the Shoshan seat should be there or shouldn't be there, do they like it or not, I get very confused, because Here on the one hand, there's this complete acceptance of sin and something that actually comes from another country. On the other hand, there's this kind of idea of democracy that creeps in and everybody's confused. You know, I think if you accept something, you might accept it, as you often say, wholeheartedly. And not beat around the bush about whether you should have a show, some ceremony or not. Creeping.

[72:03]

Creeping democracy. Yes? I've experienced some very powerful chausons and they were with small groups of people. And one of my worst experiences was in this room, one that went on for over two hours, and with a much smaller group than this. So I worry, and that's not an exaggeration, I worry a 65-person So for you, sometimes when they're more concentrated in terms of time, it works better for you. Well, I think it's just the smaller number of people is much more intimate and much more something, I don't know, something about it. So that's another danger of this group, is the group's so big, and it can get, what do you call it? Dispersed. Dispersed and just exhausting. And like sometimes, what is it, like when sometimes kids get together, you know, they go over to each other's house and they stay overnight, you know, little kids, and they just, they're totally together for like hours and hours and hours, and then finally they just really get sick of each other.

[73:13]

So by the time their mother comes and picks one of them up, they just, they hate each other. Because they overdo it, you know, they get, they have too many outflows, because, you know. Right. One of the traditional stories, as if the Sangha wants some teaching, they ask. Yeah. Either some spokespersons who speak more or less with one voice or a community or something like that. They don't ask. Silence. Yeah, right. May our intention...

[74:14]

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