That's it. When it's raining and as the stream becomes rather larger, it's going to become rather difficult to hear in here. So I'm going to assume that those of you who sit in the back prefer to do zazen than to listen to lecture, because I'm not going to holler. If you want to hear it, you're going to have to move up. Not now. Maybe you can hear all right. As the stream gets bigger, you're going to have to move up. You can move now if you want, but I think today is not so bad. It's wonderful to finally have some rain. hasn't seemed like Tassajara this breakfast period. It's been so warm and dry.

[01:08]

There's a poem of Cavafy, who's a Greek poet, that Lou pointed out to me the other day, which goes something like, there comes a time in a day, a day in every man's, every person's life, when they are called upon to say the great yes or the great no. And the one who has yes ready within him, you can tell immediately, ready within him and the saying of it. and he crosses over to honor and the strength of conviction. But the one who comes out with the great no, he

[04:02]

never repents, asked again, he would say no. The right answer. And yet, it defeats him for the rest of his life. I don't think any of us care to see things in quite that exacting, quite those exacting terms. And maybe we have innumerable opportunities to say the great yes. But with each no, and our defense of that no, our refusal to repent, it gets more unlikely that we'll know the opportunity.

[06:00]

I think few of us really understand, believe that we actually fail, that some of us, most of us maybe fail throughout our lives and don't ever know it because of such knows. such NOs. We talked about this in Choson the other day and I I'd like to express some of that feeling. Maybe we can't in such detail, but...

[07:43]

One thing I read recently which was rather interesting is that some doctor, maybe right-wing doctor, I don't know. Anyway, some doctor said medical technology has isolated us from the experience of death. And if there weren't so many penicillin shots and suchlike available to us, many of you wouldn't be here, and many of your friends would have died, and some of your children might have died. Most of us don't have much experience except traffic accidents, and now to some extent with cancer. people dying, quite a few people dying. So anyway, this doctor's idea was that's why hippies and other young people have no sense of time, no sense that they don't have much time.

[09:03]

Japanese Buddhism got involved with the samurai because of this point, you know. The samurai always has to face death, and that you can't really fight, you know, physically fight, unless you're completely willing to lose. If you retrain some feeling of I have to win this, or I have to protect myself or preserve myself. You can't freely make decisions in which the outcome is not conditioning what you do. Able to move directly into something. And I know most people, why we were talking about it is the contrast in Japanese high schools and grammar schools to our life. The only equivalent that I have seen is in

[10:46]

ghetto neighborhoods, you know, in the Lower East Side in New York, you know, or the Hill District in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where young people have some danger all the time. And we have, for most of us, no puberty rights, and most cultures have some puberty rights where you make it quite difficult for a person 11 or 12 or 13 to survive, like in the movie Walkabout, which some of you must have seen. It's rather ridiculous. sentimental movie, but the idea of it. But the man, the Australian aborigine, Bushman, is incredibly beautiful, a live person, and he goes out, you know, and has to for a year or two walk about. I don't remember how long.

[12:14]

But we do that, too. Many young people do that for very similar reasons, I think. But we don't give our young people, you know, us, when we were young, don't really have the realization we can fail. We grow up thinking somehow we're going to have a job and house and other things. It's to the extent that the people from, one of the people, Larry, Peterson, who worked with Odom, the net energy ecologist, for quite a long time, said, if we computed the net energy costs of everyone's dreams—a car, a snowmobile, a summer house, etc.—it would consume the planet to fuel everyone's dreams.

[13:45]

I thought that was rather amusing. But at some level, even we who have given up a great deal, we think, still don't really know that we fail, that we can fail, that we can fail all our life and not know it, that things actually come to and each moment you're being counted. This is Buddhist conduct, knowing that each moment you're being counted. If you know this fully, you know each moment is an opportunity. Your karma isn't clutching you, some monstrous cloud, but you know very clearly each moment is an opportunity. This takes some craft, C-R-A-F-T, though, some craft, not craftiness, but some craft. It's very interesting to see this in Japan, going back to what I was saying before. They try their best to, and almost completely, hide it from Westerners, but in

[15:22]

Japanese high schools and, to some extent, college, ordinary colleges certainly. There is a still. Of course, you know, they're not very far from the samurai period. It ended only the end of the 19th century. And spirit still exists today. It's as if We had 800 years or so of Billy the Kid behind us, but very sophisticated Billy the Kid. But we had the Wild West as a sophisticated culture in which people were required for hundreds of years to be ready for that kind of confrontation, always, night or day. So they do that kind of confrontation to each other in a way that to us seems quite brutal, and I think it's too much. I'm not suggesting we do it. But you see the edges of it when, as I said in Choson, when it reaches the newspaper that someone who tried to quit his Zen club, which happens, or Judo club,

[17:00]

is killed by the other members for quitting. And the way they kill such a person is they train them till they collapse. It most often happens when somebody has a weak heart or something and the doctor says, you should not do judo or kendo, sword fighting, anymore. So he tells the club he must quit by doctor's orders. And then they say, yes, but you have one last training. They will rotate training him for one day, two days, three days, all night, until he's, you know, bleeding and falling down, and they force him up, and finally they die sometimes. My own guess would be, you know, probably if you have some strength, and you weren't somebody who used weakness as an excuse, and you had a weak heart, they wouldn't train you to death. You could come in and hold your own and say, my doctor says I have a weak heart. But if you're the kind of person who tends to use your weakness for an excuse,

[18:21]

the other members would probably view your weak heart as just another excuse. So they'd train you especially hard, feeling you shouldn't be weak. Well, there's no kidding. One reason Japan is so successful now, you know, is Japanese people are very, very tough. And there's no fooling around, you know, about weakness. If you're weak, in high school. They almost destroy you. The other kids almost destroy you. And the nationally... I may be giving you the willies. When I first went to Japan, I got the willies. There's a Japanese government-sponsored television program about a girls' volleyball team. And the name of the game is... the name of the program is Ataku No. 1. Attack No. 1. So, Ataku No. 1 is this pretty little Japanese girl, you know?

[19:47]

Have I ever told you about those television programs? My daughter was watching these television programs, and I made her a little too tough anyway. I'm not so sure it was so good how tough I made her. these television programs really finish it off. I remember when she first started going to school, the kids beat up on her regularly. I don't think I've told many of you this story, so I'll tell it. beat up on her regularly. And every day she'd go to school crying, and her face completely wet, and she wouldn't complain. And so, we didn't notice it at first, because she never, if she falls down, she gets up immediately. She never says, oh, I'm hurt or something. It's too much, she should be able to say I'm hurt sometimes. So anyway, she was crying. So after about six weeks, we finally

[21:14]

said, you know, why do you cry every time? This gang of boys was beating up on her. So we talked with her. And we said, what do you think you should do? And she said, which for someone in first grade in Japan we thought was pretty good, she said, if I could get to the leader. Sort of Wyatt Earp kind of attitude. And she said, but I can't fight. I'm not so strong as they are. She said, so I need to embarrass him. So we discussed it with her and said, what could you do to embarrass him? And she said, if I could call him my sweet little thing, kawaii-so, which is a word you use to describe babies and kittens and things like that.

[22:29]

And she's never liked kissing in public, but Virginia or something said, why don't you give him a kiss? So Sally said she couldn't do it, you know. But Virginia and Sally practiced. Sally would walk through the room and Ginny would hide behind the sliding doors on her knees and she'd come running up on her knees, you little gaijin, gaijin means outsider, you little outsider, and Sally would turn around and say, and like she was fighting she'd rush right into the attack, you know, you kawaii so and give Virginia a kiss, you know. After a few practice runs, we She wasn't crying so much anymore. And so one day we said to her, how is it going at school after a week or so? How is it going at school? She said, okay, but all the boys are trying to kiss me.

[23:46]

And she'd done it, you know, and from then on it was much easier. Actually, we went up to the school too, you know, and we're enormous by their standards. And I put on a suit and a huge cowboy hat. And I sort of, Virginia and I sort of stormed around the school looking in all the doors, and Sally was humiliated. Because suddenly we popped in her room without anything, you know, and she did, like this. And all the kids said, that must be her father and mother, and we just, you know, towered above the door. So that helped too. The kids were amazed. Then she developed some kind of She was a little scared of the dark, and you have to go out through the garden and down a ramp to the toilet. And she developed, I don't know, from Udomyo pictures or something? I don't know. She would take my vajra, you know, a thunderbolt, and she would take it and she went out and she'd hold it like this at the garden. She'd say, stumber! And then she'd go down to the toilet, you know.

[25:15]

And then we found her doing it to other kids. We were going up the street once in a car and these kids were harassing her from behind and suddenly she spun around and did some mudra which she'd got from a book. It went like this. She turned around in the kid's face and they all fell back. But the toughest little kid I know is Minnie DiPrima. I'll tell you a story about her, too, because I think it's rather interesting. You all know who Minnie is? She's Diane DiPrima's child and Leroy Jones's child. And there's a rather tough little girl who lives across the street. I don't... Adriana?

[26:21]

something like that, I don't remember her name, in Page Street. And she used to challenge all the other kids, I'm going to beat your ass, or something like that, she'd say to everyone she met. And Minnie immediately would say, come on, and the little girl would say, tomorrow. And Minnie would move right into it immediately. And she'd say things like, you chicken. And Minnie would say, you better get your glasses and go back to the chicken, to the farmyard. But recently she moved up to Marshall. And Marshall is a lot of rednecks, maybe, white cattlemen and dairymen. And they were very hard on Minnie the first months of going to school. She was rather ostracized and treated very badly in the school bus going to school. And one day she just walked up to the leader in the school bus and said, why don't you like me? And he mumbled something in front of the whole bus and the bus driver.

[27:47]

She's ten at the time, I guess, nine or ten. And she said, why don't you like me? And he mumbled something, and she said, I want to know. I don't care whether you like me or not, but I want to know why. Is it because I'm black? And he mumbled something rather, you know. And she said, I just wanted to know. And she went back and sat down. So, but she's reversed the whole situation, because what she's done, first with that confrontation, which changed everything, and then she decided to do a play, right? So she's produced and writing a play about Dracula, who has a jisha. And now, instead of being the little girl who no one accepts, she's in charge of who's in the play.

[28:49]

And she's in charge of the acceptance. So all the kids in Marshall want to be in the play, and she holds tryouts and decides who's accepted. So she's completely reversed the situation. Now she decides who's in, instead of them, by very directly moving into the situation. Anyway, the play in Dracula Anyway, Dracula's Jisha always brings various things, and just as Dracula's about to get the victim, Sally, my daughter, is one of the victims. She's a gum-chewing high school kid in hot pants. And just as they're about to bite her in the neck, he asks Hillary, who's the Jisha, or was the Jisha, I don't know who's playing which now. And Hillary brings everything. It's the last minute, he says, my teeth. And Hillary says, I knew I forgot something. And Patricia always forgets Dracula's teeth, so he can't finish the victim off. Anyway, this is Minnie's play. Anyway, this may take all morning.

[30:17]

Anyway, the television plays... Sally was watching these television plays for kids, and they all emphasized toughness. And I hadn't watched them. Sally just watched them, you know. And Stuart Brand, you know, who did the Whole Earth Catalog, came to stay with us. And he really needed some relief from his life in America at that time. So he just rested for two weeks in our house. And he watched television with Sally, and he got me to watch them. He said, you should see these programs your daughter is watching. And Otaku Number One has things like, every program is nearly the same, basic pattern. Otaku Number One is this girl, and she's the best volleyball player in Japan. And they play Russia and the United States, of course, a great deal. and China sometimes, and other Japanese teams. And she sometimes becomes number two, and she'll be number two for a couple of years until she, through her training, becomes number one again. And the way they show her training is they do things like they have a

[31:43]

She trains with a soccer player who kicks a volleyball at her. And the program is 30 minutes long. Extremely well drawn. Extremely well drawn. And she'll be... 20 minutes of the program will be the ball coming at her over and over again, kicked by this foot. And at first she returns it and returns it and pretty soon she can't lift her arms and it just hits her in the face and she falls over and then they kick it at her even when she's down and then she struggles back up and while she's struggling up, you know, it'll show a sparkle in her eye or a sparkle in the eye of the person who's kicking the ball and the sparkle will turn into a flashback of her mother saying, or her boyfriend saying something, you know. And it'll spiral into family situations and teachers who encouraged her, etc. And all the time the ball is coming toward her and the ball takes five minutes sometimes to get to her while these flashbacks are going on. It'll return to the ball, still coming at her, and then it'll smash her right in the face. Goes down and struggles back up again. But this is designed for grade school children.

[33:10]

And when I first watched it, we have nothing, we never put ourselves in such stress. And I sat there, you know, the whole time with tears streaming down my face out of what the Japanese people go through. I can hardly watch those programs because, you know, We all know what those confrontations, when we're young, how difficult they are, and yet to make them your whole childhood, which they do in Japan, your childhood is quite comfortable up to about eight years or six years old. You have complete freedom. And then comes expectation and confrontation. One of the people who was here with Zen Center was in a convent in Japan and she took the wrong Zoris to go out quickly to empty something or pick up something outside the monastery, the mail or the garbage and when she came back the person who's

[34:42]

nun, whose Zoris they were, attacked her, and all the nuns attacked her and bit her all over. And the teacher complimented the other nuns on disciplining her with their mouth And for us, of course, there's many things to be said. Japanese people find it more devastating to be embarrassed personally than to be physically. They'd rather you hit them than slight them. Verbal assault is worse than physical assault. So physical pressure is quite common in Japan. This has nothing to do with Buddhism, this disciplining you with your mouth or anything. This is just their cultural way, just here. When you're working in the kitchen or working in the garden or in firewood, if you do something in some way that's careless, other people who work with you will discipline you in some way. In our way, our American way of doing it, this has nothing to do with Buddhism, this is just cultural.

[36:04]

In Japan, this level is just culture. But what I saw in Japan is what most cultures are like, I think, except Europe is more like that, I think. America is somehow we expect things to be easy or something, and as a result, Many, many of you are not tough enough to really practice. You get completely upset if you're slighted or offended or corrected or anything. Tsukiroshi, it was a big problem for him. He said, for years I'm full of things I want to say to people, and if I say even a portion, they are so upset I can't understand it. So they failed, so Tsukiroshi never knew them and never reached them because they weren't able to accept even something slight. This is their failure, you know, and there's no Tsukiroshi is dead. They failed, like that Cavafy poem says, they came out with the great no and that's it.

[37:27]

There's no chance now for them to know Suzuki Yoshi. That person can know the Sangha and me and other disciples of Suzuki Yoshi, but they can't know Suzuki Yoshi. And they have opportunities over and over again. I don't think we have to emphasize toughness like they have in Japan, but I do think in our monastery and our Buddhist life, but I do think you should know that it's possible to fail. to live your whole life without once realizing what it's like to really know another person or to know yourself. And as you... and the more potential you have, the more ability you have, the more possibilities you have, the more you need that toughness and that

[39:06]

challenge, some challenge. But in our society, the more possibilities you have, the more ability you have, the more you use that ability and those possibilities to protect yourself from challenge. And it should be the reverse. Each of us has some opportunity, you know, and the more opportunities you have, you should not use those opportunities or possibilities you have to protect yourself. And people with most ability in our society protect themselves the most effectively from reality. And the reverse should be true. The more your potentialities, the more you should be challenged, the more you should be ready to meet the edge of things. we want to rest all the time want to relax back into well I did that challenge now everything will be okay for another six months or I want only one challenge a year

[40:29]

Each moment you should go forward, not holding back. And craft of Buddhism is how to, maybe I can say, how to win without anyone failing, how to accomplish something without causing someone else to fail. This means you can't kill

[41:47]

You have to. You can't get rid of the disturbances, you have to move into the disturbances. So craft, I want to try to talk about craft a little bit. Buddhism is a kind of craft. And by craft, I don't know if I can get to you, it's sort of what I mean.

[42:56]

Craft in a material sense means precise control over your material world. A good carpenter should be able to hit a nail completely and accurately without leaving some marks on the wood. and a cook should know exactly what happens when you put this into the soup. And Buddhist craft extends to everything you do. For a priest, our robes are a great part of our craft.

[44:08]

And one of the problems I face is those of you who will stay layman, who should stay layman, and find out how to practice with others as a layman, one of my problems is how to... what craft can we share? What can be your craft as a layman? That also unites you with someone. I'm sure, I know there's a way. It may require, it may be, I can practice with less laymen than I can with priests. At least that's how I feel now. But it's possible. I practiced, I think, okay, with Suzuki Yoshi for many years as a layman. I didn't care whether I was a priest or not. But I found at the point where it was necessary to share my practice, it was easier to be

[45:39]

When I wanted to share Suzuki Yoshi with others, you know, it was easier for me to be a priest. It was difficult to share him. I began to feel selfish having his time so much, so I had more than my share, I felt, so I kept trying to arrange it so other people could be with him. And I found at that time it was easier if I was a priest. But still, it's possible, quite possible to practice as a layman, but harder to share the practice. And by craft, I mean you can have some of it with your robes. These kinds of robes are a little bit difficult to wear. And you'll notice some people's robes are mixed up all the time, and some people's robes are fairly straight. And some people's robes are too precise all the time. But by your whole body, you have to hold your robes. And some of you have snaps, which close your sitting robe. And maybe it's okay, because they're not made for you, so they don't fit so well.

[47:08]

And if so, you may have to use some snap. But for the most part, you should be able to keep your robe closed by your body. In the summer, you should be able to keep it open by your body, and closed in the winter by your body, how your shoulders and chest are. Not the way the tailor made it, but by your body. So there are quite precise rules in Buddhism how much this is open or closed at different times of the year. This is called your window. And you don't close the window even in the coldest weather. But you know how to handle your body heat and your robes to close off this or open this depending on whether it's hot or cold.

[48:12]

This is a kind of craft. And then you have this which is just tied around you rather uselessly. And it always is in your way or you step on it or it gets splashed in the rain. And there are precise rules how you carry it, how you carry it with other things, where you place it. And you don't just treat the robe, the okesa, that way when you have it on. At all times you treat it that way. It's treated the same way in your suitcase as it is on your body. This is some kind of craft which maybe it's difficult to understand. Japan must be the best Japanese craftsman, must be the best craftsman in the world. In everything they make, I've never seen any other culture come near the skill, or only very rarely. And Japanese craftsmen don't emphasize talent, and they don't emphasize skill. They emphasize craft. And they have many rules about how you prepare the clay, how you prepare your state of mind,

[49:44]

while you're preparing the clay. And a young artesian just follows the rules like he, like a young priest would just treat his okesa in the suitcase as same as on his body with the zangu underneath it and etc. The zangu is the bowing cloth. And by that artesian, learning the rules of his craft, because he's precise, he gets to the edge of things. And it requires some toughness to be precise, to be at the edge of things. By that you can go beyond to Buddha mind, when your mind pervades your body through and through, first by knowing your breathing. Eventually your mind and body are one, and that's the same as Buddha mind, which contains everything. But to get to the edge of things requires some craft.

[51:12]

You know, we see it when we're a carpenter. You know, it's... And we don't have any... There's some problems in here, so I want to see if I can get at our attitudes. We don't have much problem with the idea that a carpenter should be able to cut a straight line if he's building something and fit a joint. accurately. But we do have some problem when we think, I feel wiggly today, but it requires me to be straight with someone. We feel, oh, for honesty's sake, I must be wiggly. But a carpenter, when he feels wiggly, doesn't saw a wiggly line. He doesn't identify with the wiggly line or straight line as his person. As I said to somebody recently, if someone comes up to you and it's appropriate to shake your hand, you don't hold your hand at your side or put it behind your back, they would feel that was rather strange. Their hand is out there in the air and you've got your hand behind to be rather aggressive. But if someone comes to you wanting to laugh or to

[52:43]

be friendly, and you withhold that friendliness. It's exactly the same meaning. Do you possess your friendliness anymore? Does it change you to put your hand out? You shake a hand, it's all right. It doesn't change you or it's not some intrinsic defeat or unnatural act. Whether you feel like putting your hand out or not, you shake hands, that's all. So our practice of friendliness. It's a subtle practice of our rhythm with others, breathing and general knowing. Like when we laugh, we laugh not because the story is funny, but because it gives us an opportunity to laugh. It's rather one of our great pleasures to laugh. So we take every opportunity. If the story is dumb, it's all right. We're laughing because we enjoy laughing, not because the story was a good story. So you laugh with someone.

[53:53]

So there's a craft of our state of mind, too. You know, our state of mind is such and such, and you think, I don't want to control my state of mind. And we don't want to exercise control over our state of mind, that's true. But there's a kind of participation which is close to control, like a kind of participation in the carpenter sawing a straight line, in which mind and body are one. which is necessary if you're going to develop that feeling which can direct the stream of your consciousness. Not from preference or desire, but

[55:16]

as more like an experiment. You can't do it so much if you have preferences. If you, oh, I want it to go this way, not so easy. But if you don't care which way it goes, and just as an experiment you direct, you know, that also is your state of mind, and just as natural, that we don't have access to. And getting access to it, it becomes the most inclusive state of mind in which anything can happen. and which finally you don't need to direct or divert but you can just drop your discursive thinking. You need more dreaming actually in your thinking or dream action. or when you're able to think one thing, it becomes action, a kind of command. And more important than, this maybe seems mysterious, but more important than knowing

[56:41]

physically how to sit straight, eventually you can do, I will sit straight. And if you can say that without conflicting thoughts, your body listens to that command. And that level which can say, I will sit straight without conflict, or I will get through this day, or I will be friendly with so-and-so, despite some obstacle, that state of mind which can activate that is also the state of mind which is most responsive to everything. So it's the state of mind which you're most able to be free of control, strangely enough. You know, it sounds contradictory, but when we get close to the truth, it's very contradictory. how to exist in that contradictory space and allow the truth to manifest in our actions is some kind of craft, craft of mind and body. Sometimes I just say it's a mechanical problem, but maybe it's more accurate to say it's a matter of your craft.

[58:18]

craft of mind and body. And you don't like to change much, you know. We gassho. Gassho is rather like that. And some of you have been here for years and you still do that, you know. And you don't think it's important, you know. Maybe someone tells you, your thumbs are there. But that's the difference between craft and inability to get to the edge of things. You may think I'm crazy, but I don't think so anymore. And your hand is rather flat, you know. It can be a little curved maybe. Some of you are, I don't know, it's quite interesting in Menju ceremony to see your hands And some of you walk and bow like this and end your ceremony. And your hand is like this. And your feet are rather parallel or just a little bit out, not much. And your ankles are apart. I don't mean that every moment you can't sometimes be standing some other way.

[59:50]

But some of you, even older people like in Choson, after years of hearing this thing, we finish bowing in Choson and I look and almost everyone's standing like this. There's some craft to this practice which is important. How we bow, how we stand, you should have control over your material world, including your material body. So you can always be your thumb like this throughout your body, or not. It's not a matter of whether it's this way or that way. It's a matter of precision, the ability to be precise within our own framework, you know. Some people in Zen Center physically are not precise, you know, just by their birth.

[61:16]

But yet that... Some people who look the most imprecise, you know, in their general bumbling way, are for them extremely precise. Because even though they don't have the physical ability to put their thumbs together, their consciousness is in their thumbs, bringing their thumbs as best as they can be together. Tsukiyoshi says in one of the early lectures in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, that the way to control your cow is to give your cow a big pasture. that one. And he says that everything is always out of balance. Things are beautiful because they're out of balance. But background is always in harmony. Background is always in balance. And we are out of balance with the background. This is like my saying, practice means barter. Practice means

[62:44]

the experience of that preciseness and imprecision, that balance and out of balance. By having your consciousness at that point where you're precise and not precise, where your thinking falls away and where it doesn't, where your robe is open or not open, where your feet are together or not together, When you can do that you can know where your feet are in any circumstance. So samurai liked this practice very much because he needed to know exactly where his body was. Every part of his body or some chunk of it would get cut off. There's an interesting book that came out recently about Musashi. And he was quite unbelievably skillful. And it seems to be mostly true. Some of you may have seen the movies, Samurai 1, 2, and 3. He finally, after he was 29, he never fought again, except in a couple wars. But he never fought duels so much. And early on he gave up even using the sword.

[64:15]

You know his famous duel on the island with the guy who did the Sparrow Slash. He developed a famous technique called the Sparrow Slash. It resembled the tail of a sparrow. And also because maybe he supposedly cut sparrows out of the air. But Musashi was supposed to meet him on an island, and he arrived rather late. He rested in the boat. He fashioned a—from grass he fashioned a rope while he was being rowed to the island to tie his robe's kimono back, and he cut the extra ore into a wooden staff. And this man also had an extra long sword, and when he got to the beach, he jumped up out of the boat, and the other guy threw his scabbard away, and Musashi said, you don't need that anymore. And as he

[65:46]

began to swing. Musashi stepped inside and hit him over the head with the oar and killed him. And he jumped back in the boat and went away. The sword, though, cut through his kimono and undid it. As far as I know, he was never touched by a sword, almost. Maybe not at all. He was very smart, and he ended his life living in a cave. I'm not so sure he's a very good example of a Buddhist, but he killed 60 people by the time he was 29, and in many of them, heads of fencing schools. But samurai liked that kind of practice, Zen practice, which Musashi did, too. He was quite a famous painter, too. He's done many beautiful paintings of Daruma and Hotei and birds on long, sword-like branches. And you can see his alert spirit in his paintings.

[67:12]

how the birds are. One bird landing, another bird looking, some you can feel, some unusual aliveness. But a Buddhist, you know, in Japan, good Zen people don't consider swordsmen a Buddhist at all. But swordsmen like Zen practice because as Buddhists you should have that kind of alertness, without sword or anything, and your effort should be so that other people win, not so that you win, but a kind of alertness which extends to other people winning. rather difficult, most difficult thing in the world to do, to have that skill to give up yourself.

[68:24]

The strength of suffering. The strength of, it says in some Buddhist texts, to be reborn over and over again as everyone you meet is one of the strengths, unusual strengths of Buddhism. To not cower before your own suffering. You have to extend yourself to that meeting, to brave vulnerability, if you're even going to get to the point where you can make that great yes or great no.

[70:20]

My craft and discipline may be different. My craft as a priest is how I live, how I take care of things. So that my un... So the activity of detachment, I said before detachment, but I mean the activity last time, I mean the activity of detachment. So that So that the calmness of detachment, the activity of detachment, the penetration of non-discrimination is functioning for others. But my discipline is to give that up.

[72:12]

Maybe some disciple discipline will be something else and their craft will be to do what I just said. My discipline is to give that up and because I have to take care of many things. but your discipline hones your craft. I think many of you are beginning to

[73:19]

have practiced enough to have some conscious participation in your states of mind, in the way you're friendly or not friendly, and are able, maybe subtle enough, to get beyond the point of thinking natural or unnatural or control or no control, till you can see how you participate, how The totality of your thinking and dreaming is one activity, which you use some control to get access to. That's all. If your craft is not good, you can't even cut a straight line. If your craft is good, you can cut any kind of line or not cut at all. And you should have that kind of participation in your states of mind, in your states of being and activity.

[74:55]

until you know that state of mind which includes everything, which is called forth by something beyond material and immaterial, control or freedom from control. which is going beyond more than our friendliness, more than our meeting some situation. This is Buddha mind and it's not something, maybe it's mysterious, but it's not something ephemeral, it's quite real. but you need some craft to get to the edge of your own activity, edge of your own consciousness and ability. Deep familiarity and participation and courage and toughness, not so weak in your ability to know yourself,

[76:31]

not defeated by the slightest thing.

[76:34]

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