how difficult it is to understand how thoroughly Buddhist teaching is actually meant. Without a teacher, And I don't just mean, you know, Suzuki Roshi or me or some good friend. Everything is your teacher. And your teacher's job is to make you feel uncomfortable. And of course, maybe you feel good sometimes too, but to make you feel uncomfortable. So if you feel some discomfort, even without a teacher, it means someone's teaching you, if you know how to let that discomfort guide you. So whenever you feel some discomfort, you should greet the discomfort as your teacher, certainly not as something you don't deserve. Usually we react, oh I shouldn't have this discomfort,

[01:28]

I don't, I haven't always felt this way, or other people don't feel this way, or I'm unlucky or something, crazy. But actually we have discomfort because we don't, we can't hear. everything teaching us. So we usually have some, even when we understand Buddhism pretty well, we usually have some mode of understanding, you know, the way understanding has been for many years, and so we understand in that way. That kind of understanding isn't usually Buddhist understanding. It's very difficult to get out of the... There's no actual words for what I'm trying to say.

[02:44]

You know, we understand somebody says such and such, be present, you know, be present, or we say emptiness. So we understand being present, but what we really mean by being present, usually we can't actually, you can't really mean that, that's just too much, you know, because you, usually it's something you've not even ever thought of before or imagined. So we need to, the reminder is, is the discomfort. or a teacher that we haven't penetrated enough. First of all, we have to have our own space without reservation. As Dogen said,

[04:08]

our eyes horizontal and nose vertical, completely at home in this space. So you can stay in a sesshin or any place without some feeling that you're not at home. And all of, you know, every space should be as familiar as the space maybe between our fingers. We think that we feel that's our space maybe, but so is that, you know, everything is our space. When you have the kind of sensation, you know, you're closed in or there are these big hard walls or no windows or you sometimes have the feeling of there's this space that contains us with walls and windows and it's rather hard and we wonder what it's doing out there.

[05:26]

what these objects are, what connection we have with these objects, what meaning these objects have, or why the building is such and such a way, or the streets are such and such a way. It doesn't seem real, and yet it seems what everyone says is real, you know. But you're right, it's not real. That kind of space is, when you feel that, you're estranged from the actual space that we live in. When you have a dream, sometimes you wake up in the next morning, or even in the dream if you're conscious during dreams, It's very clear the space, you know, you may be walking somewhere in a hall or in some building, but it's space which is completely our own space. Well, the space of this building and the street and everywhere should be the same as that kind of dream space. When it's different, that's when our dreams go off awry or we have all kinds of

[06:54]

difficulties with our mind sort of disconnected from this, also this which we think is usual world. So when we say the world's a dream, you know, Buddhism says the world's a dream. How completely we mean the world is a dream. more completely than usually you read that kind of statement, oh it's just ephemeral. Or when we say the world's ephemeral or like a dew drop or bubble, you know, if you could realize how completely we mean it's ephemeral. And it's very difficult to know that until you live in I don't know, maybe I should say soft space. Someone said to me about feeling some soft feeling in zazen. Actually, when you practice zazen, soon you become completely soft all over. But not only your body, everything becomes soft. The whole world is soft, not hard.

[08:20]

It all seems continuous, you know, or is continuous. But there's a danger here. I mean, you can find a form for yourself, the priest or the athlete or the artist. And when you have your own form, whatever that form is, you take some form, when you're at one with that form, everybody will supply everything you need for that form. Everybody will cooperate in making you a priest poet or whatever. And you can get locked into that. So all you know is an athlete's world. You know, an athlete's world can be complete. Everything the athlete needs is there, whether it's fame or activity or a way to look at everything.

[09:49]

Bobby Fisher deciding that everybody who doesn't play chess is a weakie. In an interview once, when he was still a teenager, he criticized every chess player in the world. Finally, the interviewer said, well, what about people who don't play chess? Oh, those weakies, he said. That's when I realized I was a weakie. Anyway, maybe he's right, but you can see the world completely from any point of view. So it may be better, actually, to be a little miscast. Maybe you really are better as a businessman or artist or musician, and yet you're a priest. or maybe you're better as a priest but you're an artist. That way your world will have some discontinuity which will allow you to include other worlds. There'll be some difficulty but it may make you a better priest or artist or whatever.

[11:16]

I've thought a lot about, you know, I was brought up as an atheist and as a Protestant, more or less. I mean, you know, my family were atheists but yet the vibes were rather Protestant vibes, you know. So in the Protestant world, this world is it. And I don't exactly know the history of how it happened, but Protestants decided not to be pushed around by holy kings and gods, so they gave man back some dignity. and maybe they turned everything over to God and lost some, as a result, lost some contact with God. The spiritual space or world was God's and pretty soon you didn't have any way to sense it at all. So it was very difficult for me

[12:59]

practicing a religion when I first started practicing. It didn't make any sense at all. I just rather liked Suzuki Roshi. Intellectually it made a great deal of sense, but physically it didn't make any sense. And I always wondered why ritual or rites, for instance, and were at the center of fairly practical Confucianism in China, or why all societies had some kind of rights at the center. It wasn't until I understood what Suzuki Roshi meant by this space I'm talking about, then ritual is kind of hint, you know, it's a kind of clue for you. It's a kind of maybe untoward expression of this space. No more real than just thinking this is just some physical. I don't think you know what I mean, because this is just physical, but I don't know. It's also me, I don't know if you know, and you.

[14:31]

Anyway, if the usual view of this, that a scientist say, that stereotype of a scientist has, that's just as unreal as thinking rituals are real, but ritual is some hint, you know, and when ritual is not connected to, it's not the same as this world, and it's more than a hint, then it's off bases when your dreams and this world are not connected, like being crazy. So in Zen, the rituals are usually connected with our activity, you know, the kitchen or the toilet or chanting specific things like the lineage of our teachers or something. Of course, in popular Buddhism this is taken to have magical meaning, etc., but basically in Zen it's not taken to have magical meaning.

[15:55]

So how to walk in this world as if we are walking on the palm of our own hand is Zen practice. It is the palm of our own hand. Yeah, I guess you know the story of monkey, the monkey story about him challenging Buddha He's saying how powerful he was and he was going to jump 18 billion worlds or something like that. So Buddha said, I can't remember exactly the story, but anyway, Buddha said, go ahead. So he made this tremendous leap and he came to a great wall, I guess, or pillars. looked up, or carefully, I don't know how he described it, but anyway, he was just standing on Buddha's hand, so far as he jumped.

[17:16]

In Buddhism we talk about true mind and true mind means, it refers to, I mean let me try to give you some idea, generally we have a cloudy mind and a cloudy situation. Buddhism means a clear mind in a clear Everything is mind, but it means there's a clear situation and a clear mind. There's no difficulty, you know. The situation and your mind are the same. There's no problem in understanding what's presented to you. It's just very clear what it is, you know. Generally, for us, it's not so clear. So the actual situation we're in is Zen practice. Each moment, the actual, actual, actual situation. That's the whole world, your complete life. There's no comparing it to anything else.

[18:59]

So our practice is to know that, to have the energy to be there in that actual situation, without thinking about the next situation or this situation isn't quite what you want or something. This situation is completely your home, your space, and you should be completely at home in it, just whatever it is, even if a lion is eating you. You say, hi, home. When you feel some discomfort in that kind of, in your situation, the situation is teaching you. The situation and you are one. And we call that mutual interpenetration or something like that as a translation. Mu Zhou, who is a famous Zen master in China, someone asked him, why do we have to eat and dress ourselves? Why do we have to put on our clothes every day and eat food every day? And he said, just put on your clothes every day and eat food every day.

[20:33]

And then he said, if you don't understand that, still just put on your clothes every day and eat food every day. He means the kind of space I'm talking about. Uchiyama Roshi, who is a dharma brother of Sawaki Kodo Roshi. Is Joshin-san here? Joshin-san is the nun who has come here to teach us sewing, how to make a Buddhist robe, a raksu, which is the small one, or an okesa. In fact, those are her diagrams on the green board back there. I guess Dan drew those, but she's a disciple of

[22:02]

Suwakikoto Roshi, and Uchiyama Roshi is a disciple of Suwakikoto Roshi, and they are Dharma brothers, sisters. Suwakikoto Roshi was one of the great roshis of the generation just previous to this one. U Chyam Roshi said in a lecture once, mentioned about how the jewel, the Buddhist jewel or the moon, even though it's on a thousand waves, you know, can't be grasped.

[23:04]

And also he likes a poem, which I can't remember exactly how it goes, but something like, through the window the moonlight moves across the room and the sleepers Stir, but don't notice it. So there's nothing we can grasp, just the actual situation which we are, we can be as present in it as possible. That's all. Are there some questions we should talk about?

[24:34]

I'm talking about taking a form. For the last year, I've not been taking a form. I've experienced myself outside of the form. You know, I can't answer you specifically in this situation, but in general, as we come to inhabit our space more and more,

[25:59]

we have to take on some specific role, or we do, and people encourage us to do so and we find ourselves in some specific role. I guess what I'm saying is that if you come to then inhabit that role rather than your space or it's very similar. You even get more rewards. Everybody will reinforce that role, fill in all the spaces for you. If you need something, you don't even have to open your hand and people will put it in your hand. You'll get very powerful reinforcement that the world is exactly as you experience it. It's one of the problems with why power corrupts, you know, because when you have a situation like leaders like in this country, their view of the world is completely reinforced by everything. So there's no, I mean it's not

[27:30]

really that they're being callous or inconsiderate or inhumane or anything in most cases probably just that they don't know any other world they can't conceive of any other world so as you come to inhabit your own space which is very close to having a role one has to be somewhat cautious resist to some extent what then people try to do to you. That's what I meant. But you don't have that problem until you find people doing that to you. Yes, a perfect Zen student is rather a trapped person. Everything is, he does everything just right.

[29:17]

It's better to have some difficulty, because difficulty is your teacher, you know. If you have some difficulty all your life, that's very good, you know. That's a difficult thing to talk about because we have so many ideas about it and it's rather There are quite a few intellectual fashions about roles and games and play and work. People have some sense that goes beyond the words and then they build a kind of model around a particular word or particular insight they've had and then it becomes part of our general coinage. and it's rather confusing in that particularly role-playing is such a subject which has been much in question in the last decades. From one point of view, I mean, you can look at it and say role-playing is dishonest. There's a real me somewhere. When I find the real me, I won't be playing a role.

[30:52]

That's not Buddhism. There's no real me defined. So from that point of view, everything you do is playing a role. But if you play a role which comes from, is your role, your ego's role, and not Buddha's role, then you are playing a role in a dishonest sense. for some gain or some convenience, you project the way you want to be or you have some fixed pattern of behavior. But from a Buddhist point of view, if there's no being, no real you to find, then your roles will constantly change. Sometimes you'll be a father, sometimes you'll be a student, sometimes a teacher, and sometimes a heel, and sometimes according to your occupation, and sometimes a good friend. And each situation will define you. So then it's difficult to say what's a role because then the whole universe is a role.

[32:24]

Form is emptiness, you know, emptiness is form. What's the difference between role and ritual? We take a role during a ritual. But I think what you mean is, you could say that, in a sense I mean, if there's no being, no real you, nothing you can say, really, this suits me and that doesn't.

[33:28]

meaning that there's some real you that is there to be suited up or down. Then ritual and role are really the same meaning. Ritual is just a wider meaning. When we give this whole activity of this building some activity together, we call it a ritual, but we could call it a role. easily enough. It's the expression of its... Though ritual does mean that we emphasize it, give it almost an aesthetic quality for the purpose of making something more apparent, a kind of, as I said, hint. Anyway, that's too intellectual, I'm sorry. But anyway, it's actually something that is in your stomach or in your body. Yeah?

[34:50]

What about duties in your sense? Is that what you mean? Yeah. Your question, since you bring in China, has to be responded to rather intellectually, because China and Japan don't have identity in the same way we do. They have a group identity. And it's almost impossible for us to grasp what that means. It takes quite a few years of working with that and participating with Japanese or Chinese people here and in Japan over a long period of time to

[36:20]

see what that really means. So Confucianism is a role articulation based on group identity and that's rather different from our practice since we have an individual, but as you said, secondly, are there certain duties? I don't think duty and such words are useful, because they're useful from the point of view of practice, because they come from outside us. Even in our society there are social ideas about how you have to treat other people. If you occupy your own space, if you are present in the actual situation. There's no question of duty or not duty or anything you have to remind yourself of, this is something I should do, I have my duty, and that doesn't occur. You and the situation are continuous and one. There's no problem about it at all. Yeah?

[37:44]

If you're uncomfortable with the situation, does that mean that you are somehow not part of it? Yes. She said, if you're uncomfortable with the situation, does that mean you're somehow not part of it? And I said, yes. You can easily sort of now take your mind and say, aha, then you have to go along with everything. We certainly can be uncomfortable with the Vietnam War. or all kinds of things in our ordinary life. But that's a different kind of discomfort. We have to recognize the Vietnam War as us. And we have to recognize all kinds of things as us. That's a different kind of discomfort. As you may know, there's some question about Green Gulch Farm that I thought I'd tell you where we stand right now, where Zen Center stands. Congress has speeded up the activity on the bill

[39:18]

because Nixon came out and dedicated the park and they've drawn a map which includes Green Gulch and so they'll buy it as of in a few weeks probably. And then Green Gulch will be part of the Golden Gate National Urban Recreation Area. At present It would be nice maybe to see if we could continue using the Zen farm out there, if only because I think we'll be quite a resource for the recreation area. And one of the recent developments in the Department of the Interior is recognition of the importance for urban areas of a simple thing like an ordinary farm. And some ordinary farms have been preserved now in the East just for their ordinariness, you know, just an ordinary farm. And the idea is that there has to be

[40:43]

more contact between people growing up in the city and farms and ponds and all that stuff, you know, without going just to a big park, which is a kind of strange preservation, neither wild nor used by man, productively used by man. So to have a farm like Green Gulch Zen Farm will be and is becoming, will be quite a resource for the objectives of this National Urban Recreation Area. And so at present, I think almost everybody that I've had any contact with in the Department of Parks, the Department of the Interior, and in the Senate, think that what we're doing on the farm is very valuable and we should be able to continue it. They recognize that they wouldn't have the manpower even to keep it green and maintain the irrigation systems. So, the next step is, now that we have that agreement, that doesn't mean that

[42:12]

we'll be able to keep the farm because you all happen to be members of an esoteric fringe group. And so in fact there are some committee members who take quite a dim view of something so esoteric and Californian and oriental and probably communist. I'm serious, you know, it's true. Luckily we have the Nature Conservancy which is really going to bat for the farm and saying that this is a project of theirs and very important. If we were doing it alone we wouldn't have a chance. even though our objectives are agreed with. So the next step is, everyone agrees, or everybody, almost everybody, I think, agrees that I know about, that we should continue the farm. So the next step is, how to get those people who could make the change

[43:38]

willing to take the trouble to do it. I mean, these people who could make the change are extremely busy. They have petitions from special interest groups all over the country, and though they may agree, they just don't have time to read their mail. So, the next step is to get somebody who is thoroughly enough behind what we're doing to ask those people who have the ability to make the change to please do it. And so, to that end, Peter, who's done all the research on this, and I, or perhaps just me, I don't know exactly, will go to Wyoming in Sunday, tomorrow night? to talk to some people at the 100th anniversary of the Yellowstone National Park, and then I have several appointments in Washington with senators who are interested in what we're doing in California. It's not my idea of fun, but anyway, it seems to be necessary at this point. If this was the way we were originally obtained Green Gulch Farm, I would never

[45:06]

do it. Green Gulch Farm was obtained because of a lot of people who we can communicate with rather thoroughly, understand what we're doing and want us to have it, so we have it. This is partly that, but partly it's also just politics between whether you talk to a Republican or a Democrat and whether you have the support. It's so complex that I can hardly function, you know, you can't tell what's going on at all. But anyway, everybody seems to think it's worth trying, so we're trying. Yeah? You'll be wearing a little green hat, you know? Smokey the Bear, Bodhisattva.

[46:08]

Smoky Bodhisattva. Well, we're aiming for our continuing to own it. There are some other possibilities which, for instance, we could take some kind of limited ownership which would have maybe a duration of 25 years or something. and then hope that after 25 years we would have taken care of it in such a way and have enough friends that we could put an amendment through Congress to give us ownership of it. But at present the aim is to see if we can continue to own it in conjunction with the Nature Conservancy which retains the development rights. Thank you.

[47:27]

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