You know, I rather like our Zendo altar. Yeah, it kind of developed out of circumstance and some forethought. Partly it was just the space. I mean, Jönitz and I, we tried to figure every little, how could we fit a zendo with full tatamis and so forth in such a space. And it looked like there was no place for an altar. And certainly no place to bow in front of the altar.

[01:11]

So we discussed it, Yunus and I. Well, we'll bow in the Dharma Hall, Buddha Hall. That's good enough. And then we can make a very thin altar. So I happened to purchase those three, I call them little golden Buddhas that are sitting on the first level. I purchased them in Vienna, sort of by chance. I remember the woman in the shot whose husband runs the auction house where some of the tables and things would come from.

[02:18]

And I tried to say, look, I can't afford three. I'll buy all three. Can you... No, she wouldn't lower the price much. I always try to get a little bit of a reduction. Not really so much to save money, but Sukhya, she told me, never buy a Buddha unless it's partly given to you. And I always try to get at least a little bit of a discount. You know, it would be good if you partly gave it to me. Well, I don't know. Getting a little bit of a discount and not even so much to save money, but because Suzuki Roshi told me, I should never buy a Buddha, unless at least part of it is given to me.

[03:27]

And I tried to explain it to her like that. So then we were hunting for a long time for a Manjushri, and Roland Gauthier gave us this Nepalese, Tibetan-style Manjushri. And... So the altar, there's these three Buddhas, like all of us sitting in rows, like Buddhas. With the feeling that we are Buddhas. But we are Buddhas if we practice. And Manjushri represents up above the three Buddhas practice.

[04:40]

And you see he articulates the chakras in his costume and in his posture. He articulates a certain yogic attentional space. And this is a little bit of an aside, but one of the questions I ask myself is, what makes people with a Christian or Abrahamic, Judaic background are open to practicing Buddhism. And now you can sort through the teachings and say, yes, there's similarities, but I really think there's a conceptual similarity.

[05:47]

And you can go through the teachings and say, yes, there are certain similarities. But I think there really is a conceptual similarity. I would say that the distinction between Mohammedanism or Muslim religion and Christianity... I would say that the difference between Islam, the Muslim religion, and Christianity... is that Mohammed is a prophet and a messenger from God. But the reference point is heaven and God. But Christ is the sun. or the child of the God. What was that God doing? Anyway, yeah.

[07:03]

So Christ is the child of and comes to live with us humanoids. We look like humans, humanoids. Christ is the child of God and comes to earth to live with us, humanoid beings, human-looking creatures. So we could call him the terrestrial Jesus. And, um, and, uh... And because he could influence the weather and heal people, etc., he's a kind of also like God. And I think there's some statements that he was also God. You can see I'm not a theologian. I'm simply an observer. So Jesus is a God among us. Somehow, conception.

[08:26]

And we try to live, if you're a Christian, a kind of life which is Jesus-like. In any case, this emphasis on the terrestrial life has developed Europe and America, which everyone in the world wants to live in. Very many. Somehow the story of the Christian story and the story of Christ has developed into an emphasis on how we live together.

[09:30]

We'll see if it can continue to develop and evolve. Anyway, Buddhism is also concerned, of course, with how we actually live in this world. Now, yeah, it was fun to see the anti-ji movie last evening. And one of Sawaki Kodo, Roshi's favorite saying is, Zen is completely useless. It's a wonderful useless practice or something, which is his motto. Zen for nothing, I think we'd say.

[10:32]

And a version of that motto of his seems to be the title of the movie. But Entai-ji is very much a tributary, a river that goes in, but the word tributary actually comes from tribe, so part of our tribe. Aha, okay. Yeah, it's okay. Yeah, so Kodo Sawaki studied with Ango with Oka Sotan. And Kodo Sawaki had a practice period with Ango with Oka Sotan.

[11:38]

Yeah, and he is the seems to be the one person in the late 19th century who all the main Soto-shu realized practitioners had some contact with, either as a disciple or as a practicing within some way like Kodo Sawaki did. And he seems to have been the figure in the late or in the 19th century, in the second half of the 19th century, with whom all realized teachers in the Soto school had any form of contact. Either as a student or simply as people who practiced with him, like Kodo Sawaki Oshii. And Suzuki Roshi's lineage, our lineage, also has that connection with Oka Sotan. Yeah, now let's live up to that lineage if we can. Anyway, Graham Petsche, who I mentioned earlier, I did his...

[12:42]

memorial and funeral service at Green Gulch some months ago, just before I came to Europe. And he was my close compatriot in starting to practice together at nearly the same time with Sikirishi. But when he went to Japan at some point to practice at the Heiji, he also practiced at Entai-ji for some time. And he says, I'd really like to explore this more, but he says he started the sitting practice at Entai-ji. And he said, and I would really like to find out more, but he claimed, he said that he introduced the sitting practice into a taiji.

[14:13]

When he told me that, I sort of really examined it, but it seems strange because Sawaki Kota Roshi emphasized his whole emphasis with going back to Dogen's time And how did Dogen make her cases in Raxus and emphasizing Zaza? And so I didn't really investigate that at the time when he said that, but it seems a bit strange to me because Kodo Sawaki's whole emphasis was on going back in Dogen's time and finding out, for example, how Dogen sewed the Okesas and the Raksus and so on. And also the emphasis on this Zen practice. But in any case, he said when he started going there, they weren't sitting regularly or something, so he'd go sit by himself, and then people began to join him and so forth. I don't know what really happened, but that's what he told me.

[15:14]

Maybe he went there when they were all on vacation. LAUGHTER Anyway, the main disciple, the earliest disciple, Kota Sawaki Roshi was Uchiyama Roshi, who became the head of Entai-ji, was the person I practiced with when I was first in Japan. And one of Sawaki Kota Roshi's disciples was Joshin Kasai-san, a nun. But she received transmission from him. And she was the sweetest person.

[16:26]

We took her to the beach once, and she doesn't know how to swim. I mean, Japanese people, unless they live by the ocean and happen maybe to be fishermen, they might know how to swim. But in general, Japanese people don't know how to swim. They're surrounded by water, but they don't know how to swim. Anyway, so we all ran into the ocean. She ran into the ocean, and then suddenly we saw this little shaved head saying, Haripu!

[17:26]

Haripu! Well, you can't say L, so Haripu. People pulled her out and... Anyway, my wife of the time, Virginia, and she became very good friends. And it's Virginia who really invited Joshin-san to come to San Francisco. And she started our teaching of how to do the robes. And she lived in a little kind of one-room hermitage hut on the grounds of the original Antigene. But at some point after I left Japan, the property was up on a hill above where I lived, not very far above where I lived in Japan, in what had been Gary Snyder's house.

[18:55]

But the city of Kyoto was expanding pretty rapidly at that time, and property values were... They had a pretty big piece of property with a bamboo forest and so forth, garden, and they sold it, and it became an apartment complex. Which may have been a good practical and even a practice decision. Because it's kind of unheard of.

[20:10]

Once a place is a practice place. Every effort is made to keep it that way for maybe at least a thousand years. So one of the rules in developing Yohannesov Quellenweg is don't develop it so it would ever look attractive to a hotel. Make the rooms too small or something. Yeah. So then Tatsugami Roshi is also a disciple.

[21:19]

He didn't receive transmission from Uchiha, from Sawaki Koda Roshi, but he's a disciple of Sawaki Koda Roshi. And usually you can't be called Roshi unless you have received transmission. But if people seem to recognize you, whether you received transmission or not, this guy's a Roshi or gal, then that's another way somebody is called and recognized as a Roshi. And through tatsugami, who practiced at anti-ji, And his Dharma brother was Uchiyama Roshi, which we now have Vicky here and Yonitz and Myrta.

[22:32]

So when I saw the movie last night, I thought, hmm, that's another campsite of our tribe. And they had a big bonfire. Anyways, I used the money to build that new temple you saw. Doesn't look so new, but it's pretty new. And I don't know why they didn't build a traditional Zendo more like this, but anyway, they didn't. And now, as you saw, the A teacher is a German person.

[23:46]

Who Otmar knew in Berlin years ago. Now the elephant in the room is, why would a practice center allow a film to be made? I've sometimes been asked by a journalist or a movie, could we come to the practice center and make a film? And over the last 50 years, I've always said no. And when people have come and said, I want to do something and write about you and things, I've always said, I want you to come as a student, and if you're here to tell someone else about us, don't come. Maybe I'm too strict, I don't know. But it's a question, because it's going to be asked and will be asked again after I'm gone and I'm not here.

[24:56]

It'll be difficult. How would you feel if Dennis came and said, I'm arriving with a cameraman from America and we're going to make a film for America about Yohannesov? He said no. But why would during the practice period a cameraman is following him around and he looked very handsome? I think it would interfere with the practice period.

[26:12]

But anyway, the question comes up quite often, and then lots of people will come to Antalya probably, and I would rather people only come here if they find out about us through a problem or they want to practice or something. One reason I don't put articles in with Shambhala's son I don't want people to come here because they know about me in some sort of general way. Mr. Kirishi would say, and he says, I just was reading an old lecture, he said, your cushion is not only your home, it's your entire world. That's a kind of powerful attitude, I think.

[27:33]

And it influenced me to as much as possible to make my whole world those of you who I practice with here and also in Creston. I have some kind of I don't know what's wrong with me, but some kind of feeling. I just don't want to have what we do and what I do known generally in public. It doesn't belong there. That was a sign.

[28:38]

That was an agreement or a disagreement? We don't know. Now, I also, of course, was pondering watching the movie. And of course I thought about it while I was watching the film. What are they doing that's different from what we're doing and I'm doing? What are they doing that's different from what we're doing and I'm doing? He, what is the man's name who's the roshi there?

[29:43]

Mu-ho. Mu-ro. Mu-ho. I had a good feeling about his presence, Muho-san's, Muho-sama. And he seemed to be presenting quite well what I know of as Japanese way of practicing. And a Japanese monastic way of practicing. Which means no heat. As soon as you have heat, you're lay practicing. Because you can't expect people to come for two weeks or something at a time and get used to living in the cold.

[30:45]

I remember when I was living at Tassajara for six months a year. I would sometimes have to go to the city to give a lecture or do something. And when I left, it was winter, and I've been living with no heat and well below freezing. Centigrade freezing. No, that's unmixed up. It was above freezing. About 12 or 14 degrees was a typical winter day of Fahrenheit. So that's above freezing. But it's cold. Can I just say it's cold?

[31:51]

Just say it's cold. You're always taking the easy way out. No, you don't take the easy way out. I was sleeping 12 degrees centigrade. Anyway, cold. And when I would get driving out, I felt like I was coming into a new world of... What's all this stuff? It's so strange. And my whole skin and body would tingle because it wasn't used to heat. My body had adjusted to not having any heat. And when I left Tassajara, my body started to tingle and to have strange sensations. What is all this? And what that was, was the transition from being back in places where there was heating and my body had gotten used to living without heating. I think they have hot water At Tassara now?

[33:00]

Hot water? Yeah. Or only cold water? Oh, in the rooms, in the sink, it's only cold water. Only cold water, yeah. And there's heat in the rooms? No, not in every hut. But some, huh? Well, some, but very low. Okay, well, that's good. Because I wouldn't have put heat in, and I thought they did some after I left. So in any case, in Tassajara the water in the rooms is still only cold water. And in the huts it's a bit, at least in some, it's a bit of heating that heats up at least a bit. And in some it's not heating. And as I said, I would have left it like that, that there is no heating. So washing with cold water every morning and so forth, you have to get used to that. And it takes a few months to get used to it. And you can't have just short-term visitors, at least in the winter.

[34:03]

Yeah. Now, as you know, I'm interested in these shifts. What can I just mention between the kind of shift between the Muslim religion and Christianity in terms of the reference point of heaven or the reference point of earth? As you know, it's my interest, I have an interest for shifts, for differences, for example, between the Muslim tradition and the Christian religion, how the difference is between when the sky is the reference point or the earth is the reference point. pretty traditional way of Japanese monastic life. I mean, and what I'm doing and what we're doing, I think, and often I don't know what I'm doing.

[35:33]

I only recognize what I'm doing later. So what I think I'm doing and what I feel we're doing together is trying to discover not what Japanese Buddha is but what is the, let's say, conceptual difference between Japanese Buddhism and Western lay Buddhism. And what are the the essentials of our tradition which can be brought into the West and brought into lay life.

[36:47]

Since I'm looking at these differences, not as a philosopher or something, but I'm looking at these differences as a way we can bring practice into the West and into our lay life, not just monastic life. We can bring the essentials of our tradition into our Western practice and into our lay life as Westerners. Okay. Okay.

[38:02]

Now, okay, so how do I define Western culture? Conceptually. It's a conceptualized, entity-defined culture. And how would I describe East Asian yogurt culture? It's an attentionalized, processive culture. No. What difference does that make? How can we see an example of that?

[39:03]

One of the most obvious is in how we dress, the rakesa, etc. And one of the most obvious examples is the way we dress, the okesa and so on. The okesa is a gestural space, a tensional space. I don't think there's anything equivalent in our Western clothes except a man's tie on your chest. And you can study people's ties in television news and politicians. what the gestural space is.

[40:10]

Okay. Man kann das Okesa nicht anziehen wie ein Pullover. Es kann nur durch Gesten angezogen werden, die man lernt. Du nimmst die zwei Ecken zusammen und machst das hinter deinem Kopf. And you have to have the two corners slightly off so that they are underfolded. Then you have to use your head. And really, if you don't do those gestures, I've even seen the people who make the robes In Japan, get completely mixed up and not able to fold it unless they go through the whole motions that a monk does.

[41:28]

And you can't really put it on if you don't go through this whole sequence of gestures. I've even seen this with the people who sew the Okesas in Japan, that they are completely confused and can't put it on if they don't go through the whole sequence of gestures from start to finish. So it requires attention, gestural attention. And it requires a series of steps. And it requires continual adjustment. You really see this, as I mentioned, in the Maiko and Geisha. They require two or three dressers just to get there, and their whole body has to carry this sculpture of their dress. I'm not saying we should do that. I could come in that way with high heels.

[42:30]

Why not? It might be fun. You're supposed to know how your okesa is, flat in the front. Right in the back, you're supposed to know how it is in the back, even though you can't see it. Some women's clothes, Western women's clothes, require being buttoned up on the back. But we don't have this.

[43:32]

There are too many examples of this gestural space required to put on your clothes. Now, what is partly the point of this? Is because your clothes teach you how to have a certain kind of attentional body. Your ability to hold the clothes in place so that they stay a certain way, or you know when they're not that way, helps develop your posture. And the concept also is the body is free or naked inside the clothes.

[44:41]

So the collar doesn't sit against the neck. It sits back. And so there should be about that much or at least a finger between the back of your neck and the collar. I mean, that's the tradition. Dazu gehört auch, dass zum Beispiel der Kragen nicht direkt an den Hals anliegt, sondern dass da so ein kleiner Raum, mindestens ein Fingerbreit Platz ist zwischen dem Kragen und dem Nacken. So it's sort of like living inside a sleeping bag. It's ein bisschen so, als würde man in einem Schlafsack wohnen. In the summer you open up the window, this is called the window, and in the winter you close up the window. And in summer you open the window, and this is the window, and in winter you close the window again. And the little, on the ratsu, the little pine needle stitch is really probably a kind of astral sign, a shape of stars, which is at the back of the spine.

[46:12]

And the stars in heaven are not, in East Asian yogurt culture, are not a future. It's a present right now that you're relating to. And there's koans about that. And you can see some people find out how to wear the robes, and some people it's very hard for them. Other habits, which the attentional dynamics of the clothes don't teach you a certain kind of yogic body.

[47:15]

And you can see it. Some people learn how to wear robes. And for others it's really difficult. They may have other habits. And the clothes don't teach them how to develop a certain kind of attentional yogic body. Okay. Now I think I should stop. You've got enough irrelevant information. And I did the other half of the lecture would be why not scratching is such an important instruction for Zazen. A scratching is a gesture. Not scratching is a gesture. A refrain from gesture. A... And your skin is the largest organ of the body.

[48:32]

I think it's five to seven kilos of skin. And spread out would be about, I read, nine family-sized pizza boxes. Well, the job of the skin is to protect you from noxious, venomous insects and things like that. Und die Aufgabe der Haut besteht darin, dich von zum Beispiel giftigen Insektenstichen zu schützen. Japan being rather semi-tropical has lots of weird insects. Und weil Japan so ziemlich halb tropisch ist, gibt es da viele komische Insekten. And one of them is the mukade. Und eins von denen ist die sogenannte mukade. Giant centipede. Centipede?

[49:34]

And they sometimes end up in your bed. They come up with the pipes and around. And they have a real serious butt. I mean, worse than a hornet, but not as dangerous. And they have a really strong bite. It's worse than being stung by a rhino, but it's not that dangerous. And they're hard as heck to catch and things, because they wiggle. And I've found them quite often in my bed. And once you've found one in your bed, all night long you're kind of like, what was that itch? There's another one. So this largest organ in your body is trying to protect you all night long and there might be another one. And somehow When you start to do zazen, it seems like the skin is saying, hey, wait a minute, are you relaxing your defenses?

[51:04]

Be careful, so after you sit, suddenly little itches start appearing. There's a yogic mukadi waiting for you. But if you can restrain yourself from scratching, the skin sort of relaxes, becomes like a baby skin. You may feel after Zazen sometimes Then you enter a non-gestural space in which the gesture of the spine and the body can find a new experiential realm. So that's a preview of coming attractions.

[52:11]

I mean of distractions. A preview of coming distractions. Thank you very much. Thank you.

[52:40]

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