This is the let's take it easy today lecture. So it will be anecdotal and there will be no content. And tomorrow will be the I have nothing left to say lecture. And the day after tomorrow will be You can no longer listen lecture. Yeah, it happens every session. Okay. There's a potting village in... See, we're starting out. There's a potting village in the... Japan called Onda or Onda Sarayama.

[01:02]

Onda Sarayama. Sarayama. You don't have to repeat it. No, thank you. If you can. You know anything about Japanese pottery? It came to the wider public's attention through Bernard Leach and Yanagi Soetsu and Amada Shoji and so forth, those three particularly. You don't have to repeat their name. Thank you. But it's, you know, it's, I'm very touched by the village. I've seen, saw a film on it at one time. And it's built along a stream.

[02:12]

And there's not much room. I mean, it's really just these little spaces along the stream. And so they limit it to 10 potting families. They don't let any new potters from anywhere else move in. And that's been true since the 1700s. And in order to pound the clay, and also there's a limited amount of clay, so they limit the number of families that can pot. And every of the ten potting families...

[03:14]

Only two wheels are allowed. So when the son is old enough to start potting, the grandfather has to stop. Even though he really loves to pot and wants to keep doing it, uh-uh. He has to stop. And because it's in the mountain stream, they have logs which fill with water from the stream and then, like those things in gardens, and then they pound the clay. They keep dumping the water and pounding the clay. And so the play is made ready by this pounding of the stream. And it goes night and day like a mokugyo. A whole bunch of mocha girls going all the time, pop.

[04:45]

And then another one goes pop, and then another one goes pop, you know. So living along the stream is sort of living in clay-pounding Mokugyo land. And so when the son is old enough to start potting at 18 or 20 or something like that, when the grandfather retires, and the two wheels are near each other, in the film, like you'd be the father, And you'd be the son, but that far apart.

[05:47]

And two wheels. And the kid grows up, of course, in the midst of potting going on all his life, grandparents, etc., But the style is very Zen. You don't teach the guy anything. So he just sits near his father, maybe about that or that far away. And when he's allowed to start potting, he makes pots. Does the best he can. And then he shows it to his father, and his father smashes it. And this goes on for a year to two years. The father just smashes the pots. And the clay is reused.

[07:02]

They kind of do something with it and reuse the broken pot clay. And this whole idea of interdependence and all that, you see it conceptually in their idea of what a plot is. It's a grey stoneware. with a particular way of incising the surface often and glazing with a thin see-through glaze, a technique inherited in the 1700s also from Korea.

[08:03]

This is also a technique that was inherited from Korea in the 1700s. And they use Korean style, inherited from Korea style, kilns which go up a hill, so the heat goes up the hill. Kilns? Kiln? Kiln? Brennöfen. Brennöfen, okay, thank you. Yeah, one of those. Yeah, and what they also took from Korea are Brennöfen, which are arranged up the hill. Mm-hmm. And their conception of a pot is each pot should be different from the other pot. Another pot. And they're made to be stable and sturdy so they last a long time and can be used for household storage and stuff.

[09:27]

And they're made so that they don't conduct heat too much so you can hold them when they have hot liquids in them. Even though they've been making for several hundred years the same type of pots, each one is supposed to be individual, so you develop a personal relationship to it. Und obwohl sie dieselbe Art von Töpfen jetzt schon seit Jahrhunderten machen, es soll jeder Topf ein Einzelstück sein, sodass man selber seine eigene Beziehung dazu entwickelt. And the idea is, really, it's interesting, the idea is that if each one's unique, and you develop a personal relationship to it, and the pot changes slightly over time, you'll become attached to it. Und die Idee, das ist wirklich außergewöhnlich, die Idee dabei ist die, dass wenn jeder Topf einzigartig ist und wenn du eine persönliche Beziehung dazu entwickelst und wenn dieser Topf sich über die Zeit hinweg verändert, dann haftest du dem irgendwie an, dann fängst du an dem zu hängen.

[10:43]

And then it will accumulate memories. Und dann wird der anfangen, Erinnerungen zu speichern. So the pot is conceived of as something that you'll It will remind you of things when you happen to use it at the time, such and such. Yeah. And they're meant to... The idea also is, it's surprising to me, that it's so clearly conceived, that's meant to, from the way it's made and the way it looks, create a calm feeling. So you put it in the room just so it sits in the room somewhere where you can see it. And the idea is also, and this is surprising for me, that this is so clearly conceptualized.

[11:46]

The idea is also that they should radiate a certain peace, that they should radiate a certain peace, simply so that you can place them somewhere in space, so that you can see them. So the young son, making the pot has these ephemeral or subtle qualities ought to come into the making of the pot. I can imagine the father potter getting a pot from his son. Well, pretty good. It has a nice shape, but no one would want to keep it smashed. Yeah.

[12:47]

Well, and to me, and seeing this film a while ago, and knowing something about on the stoneware, And the way the craft is passed is kind of an perfect example of how in Zen transmission is supposed to happen. We can't follow that because we are mostly lay people and we live separately, etc. That's... Part of the reason many Zen teachers classically actually wouldn't give lectures because just being together is the main teaching.

[13:59]

So, I mean, what we're trying to do here is to create a place where we can at least spend some time together. And I'm sure that the pots of the father develop as well as the sons in the process of three generations potting together. Now, I want to talk to Otmar and see if we can make a big stream that comes down with a big moka gill that keeps going all night long. I remember once I took a taxi from the airport in San Francisco.

[15:02]

I can't remember why or what, but anyway, I took a taxi. I remember that I once took a taxi from the airport in San Francisco. And I said, I want to go to 300 Page Street. It's Page and Laguna. He said, oh, Page and Laguna. Oh, the woodpecker building. And there I said, yes, I would like to go to 300 Page Street. That's the corner of Page and Laguna. And then the taxi driver briefly thought about it and said, ah, yes, that's the Spächtenhaus. Yeah, because he'd heard him hitting the Hahn, you know. Oh, because he'd heard him hitting the Hahn. Yeah, like that.

[16:02]

Ivan Ilyich I mention every now and then because he was such a dear friend and I loved him so much. Ivan Ilyich, whom I always mention because he was such a good friend and I loved him so much. Anyway, he was half Jewish, Catholic, Croatian, Viennese. He was the secretary of the Pope in the early part of the 20th century. Anyway, I used to visit him fairly often. And sometimes he'd go somewhere and ask me to join him. So we spent a fair amount of time together. And those of you who know about him, he had this big cancer on his face, which he didn't treat. When I had cancer, as I mentioned earlier in this session, I called him up and talked to him and said, do you think I should treat this or not?

[17:25]

Sukhiroshi decided not to treat his cancer, but the doctor almost cried when he wouldn't do it. He said, okay, for you I'll treat it. But Sukhiroshi was fairly old at the time, so it's not the same as Illich, who was quite young when he got cancer. Anyway, Illich was also some kind of yogi and he had some abilities like when this face hurt too much, he concentrated on a certain point he discovered on his shin and concentrating there took the pain away. Yeah, one time I was sitting at his sort of dining room kitchen table.

[19:09]

He kept his house open to people just to come and hang out. And sometimes they were taxi drivers or the local somebody who took care of somebody at a kindergarten or something. So quite, you know, it's also, you know, various philosopher types would come too, but it was this interesting mix. He didn't really like being a public figure. And I think he pretty much followed. He wouldn't give a lecture that required amplification. Anyway, so I happened to be sitting with him. We were talking, just the two of us, about somehow I indirectly or indirectly asked, What was his relationship to, given his extraordinary interests, etc., what was his relationship to God or religion?

[20:34]

And once we were sitting there and just the two of us were talking to each other. And I somehow asked him, since he had this great interest, what his relationship to God and to religion was. And he said to me, Jesus is always nearby. And I said, I sort of asked, how nearby? And he said something like, oh, seldom more than 10 or 15 feet. Yeah, and it was almost, it's kind of like a guardian angel that he thought was always with him. And it's interesting, the concept of guardian angel, nowadays it's blankets and thumbs, but you know. Und es ist interessant, diese Idee von Schutzengeln.

[21:47]

Heutzutage sind es Decken oder Daumen. But the concept of guardian angels is pre-Christian. It goes back in almost every culture. There's some concept of a guardian angel. Und diese Vorstellung von einem Schutzengel, die geht dem Christentum voraus. Die reicht ganz weit zurück. In fast jeder Kultur findet man irgendeine Art von Vorstellung von einem Schutzengel. And I remember part of the conversation was at that time of how he was dealing with the pain. And somehow it was partly that all this presence of Jesus made his life work. Und irgendwie ging es darum, dass er gesagt hat, dass diese immerwährende Gegenwärtigkeit von Jesus sein Leben funktionieren ließ.

[22:50]

In no way did he expect me to see Jesus. Only 10 feet, oh, hi. You need a shave. Yeah, it was clearly a belief of his own but that went beyond belief and was his reality. Okay, so now let's go back to the hot drink talk last night. Yuan Wu said, whole essential being. Yuan Wu says, the whole essential being appears before you and nowhere else.

[24:12]

Okay. Now, we could be rather philosophical in a multiverse, universe, multiverse, as Buddhism conceives of it. It's something we can know very little about. I mean, Big Bang and all that. But still. Still. Basically, we have two choices. It's either a universe with boundaries and then what the hell's on the other side of the boundaries. Also entweder ein Universum mit Grenzen und dann was zur Hölle soll eigentlich auf der anderen Seite der Grenzen sein?

[25:14]

Or it has no boundaries. Oder es hat keine Grenzen. The Asian yogic culture decided among those two choices the most useful is it has no boundaries. And it has no beginning and no end. And, I mean, basically the culture somehow decided, beginning's an end, that's a problem I don't want to deal with, jeez, mythologies. So it's a practical decision in a sense about something we know nothing about, really nothing about. I should say that I forgot my watch, so we don't know how long this lecture will be.

[26:15]

As well as it's about nothing. Okay, so... If we start from this point of view that the universe, multiverse as conceived of by Buddhism and you end up with a conception of allness and not oneness And then, since everything's interrelated, any one part is interrelated with everything.

[27:16]

like the butterfly causing a hurricane and, you know, et cetera, chaos theory. So you can look at it sort of semi-philosophically like that and say all essential being Because whatever appears before you is interconnected with everything. Now, we can go into this kind of statement, Dogen makes a lot of them, with some depth to understand the practice of the alaya-vijñāna. Okay, but this kind of statement, whole essential being appears before you, is not about whether it's true or not.

[28:37]

You can try to think, well, because it's true, I'm going to practice it. We practice it because it's useful. So it turns out, and Yuan Wu, along with Dogen and a few others, the most credible Zen commentator. So in an experientially conceptual way, similar to Ivan Illich, Feeling Jesus was always present in his life. The Zen practitioner feels all essential being is always before me. ready made for me appears before me and nowhere else and that and nowhere else is very similar to the practice you all know I did for me effectively in the early years of my practice so there's no place to go and nothing to do

[30:39]

And on the surface of it, no place to go and nothing to do was a lie. I had many places to go and a heck of a lot of things to do. I had my first normal job and not setting pins in a bowling alley or something. And I had a baby who's now 51 or 52 and is going to be here in a week. Anyway, so I had to earn a living and I was sort of head of the San Francisco Zen Center at the time.

[31:40]

As president or something. But every time I felt I had to go somewhere, I said, there's no place to go. And it was a lie. I had some place to go. When I had something to do, I said, no, nothing. And it took me about a year and a half to establish that there always is one who is not busy. But the attentional skill that we developed through Zazen practice to hold in front of us as our first aspect of the appearance of any moment,

[33:02]

that whole essential being is nowhere else but here. And if you remind yourself of that long enough, often enough, it becomes true, not because it's philosophically true, it becomes true in your experience. So it's not about whether it's true, it's about can you make it true. Okay, thank you very much. May God bless you. May God bless you.

[34:17]

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