So the virtues that society inculcated were those that allowed you to meet conflict and contest. And sometimes that conflict was such that it could only be resolved by divine intervention. Now, there's some similarity here between this view and Buddhism. Buddhism is not based on the idea that we need conflict and contest. But it is based on the idea that we essentially learn things through insight, through moments of fusion.

[01:04]

And those moments of fusion often only become... This is carrying translation too far. Uh-huh. And these moments of fusion or insight can only really be actualized by a a transformation of your worldview or a move to another level, or maybe you could even say a kind of divine intervention of a sort.

[02:23]

In other words, if you study Buddhism carefully, why is Buddhism like it is? Why is the practice like it is? It's to prepare you for those moments of realization. And to give you those capacities that allow you to notice these moments. And the courage to face them. And the courage to open yourself to the transformation required. by this increase in knowledge or realization.

[03:28]

So courage and imperturbability are not just qualities of the Buddha, but there are those qualities that allow us to realize our own Buddha nature. I don't know, does that make any sense? Some people aren't so sure, I can tell already. I've never said all this before, most of it. These questions you gave me made me wonder how could I respond to this in a new way or more inclusive way.

[04:33]

What also interests me about this is the difference in the way friendship is understood in Buddhism. I talked at Johanneshof of a month or two ago about friendship. Wasn't, didn't I, what, you know, a while ago. In the summer, yeah. And I said it's funny that there's so little, there are little, few stories in our culture about friendship. I mean, if you read Chinese poetry and literature, it's mostly about friendship.

[05:37]

Somebody will travel across China just for two days of... writing poetry and drinking wine together with a friend before you have to go off somewhere. We have lots of romantic novels but few novels about friendship. So I was thinking, are there any examples? And Eric over there had a charming suggestion, the wind in the willows. Do any of you know that story, the wind in the willows? No.

[06:37]

You know it, though, by Eric. Through Eric only, my goodness. Okay, anyway, that's one. And somebody else said the epic of Gilgamesh, which goes back quite a ways. Is the wind in the waves translated, Eric? Yes, it is. And is it translatable? Does it come across in translation? It's quite a marvellous book about these... Yes? Okay. Well, that's another... There aren't too many examples so far. And Winnie the Pooh, of course. Okay, but that's children's books. Yes, but it's read by grown-ups, too. Oh, I know, but still, my point is there aren't too many examples. And friendship, again, in Greek times, was very similar to, in Buddhism, friendship is based on affection, courage, and a shared vision that you sustain through that friendship.

[07:54]

Friendship in our culture is mostly some private... And in Buddhism, friendship is the Sangha. Those who share a vision of how we can live together. And have the mutual affection and courage to effect that vision. And I would say then that Buddhism is a search for true friendship. In this sense, I would say that Buddhism is a search for true friendship.

[09:20]

So this kind of saschin, this institution or practice of saschin, is to gather the kind of help we need And the word virtue also means to know you can't do it alone. And to open yourself to those qualities that allow you to do it with others. To allow yourself to establish a vision of the world. A vision of our human life that's to our own benefit and that benefits others. To really know that through self-study, for ourselves and for others, and to commit yourself with your friends, to establish

[11:38]

this way of being with others. Without that kind of personal and shared vision, which I think is the true meaning of friendship, society flounders. Flounders means like a fish goes, flops, it doesn't know where to go. And any of us can have the courage of those views that allow us to act for the benefit of all. And that is the thought of enlightenment. And that seems like a good place to stop. Thank you very much. We pray in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

[13:01]

Amen. Oon, Morio, Seigan, Ga-il, Butsu-do, Mojo, Seigan, Jo. How many times do you have to tell me where to save you? The results are indestructible. I promise to prepare them for an end. They are limitless at that time. I promise to save them. The objective of Germany is unsurpassable. I promise to achieve it.

[14:01]

You know, I think there's no doubt that this Sashin practice is one of the hardest things to do in this world. At least one of the hardest things one chooses to do voluntarily. I am touched that all of you are willing to do this. Kujo genu yo no wa Yaku senman no niyo ayo koto katashi Warei manden no shibuji suru koto etari

[16:27]

negawa kuwa nyorai no shinjutsu yo shi tate matsuran I will be right off and not to be around forevermore. If you want to go to the church, you can go to the church. You can go to the church. You can go to the church. Good afternoon.

[17:42]

Of what some people consider the third day. But we're not counting. You know, lecture seems to start about 10 minutes late every 15. We don't count. Oh. I count sometimes. I get the feeling you're all out to pasture and you don't want to come into the barn to lecture. Eno has to go out there barking like a sheep dog. Maybe there's just not enough toilets, sir. Maybe tea is too long or something. Shall we decide that lecture starts at four every day instead of ten to four? Since that's what's happening, let's go with reality.

[19:03]

Anyway. Don't worry. Yeah. It's so much easier to give lectures in Sashin than in seminars. You do most of the work. I can speak about practice with more ease than I can when I have to establish it in seminars. I think we will start doksan maybe tomorrow morning.

[20:03]

I have to start tomorrow morning or tomorrow evening at least. I always kind of hate to start because then I'm not in the zendo and I like sitting in the zendo with you. But then once I start, I think, oh, why didn't I start sooner? It's so nice to have dog signs. So anyway, we'll see when I start tomorrow. Mm-hmm. And, you know, most, some of you anyway, or many of you are not my students, but, so don't worry, just talk about practice in some relaxed way, don't, it's no big deal. And the traditional stick I keep well hidden. I keep a traditional stick well hidden.

[21:15]

Now I'd like to say something about practice that opens up, or at least maybe opens up the image we have of our body. Again, I will emphasize as I did yesterday that practice is both for the purpose of understanding and for the purpose of realization. And if you see it this way, you don't end up in the gradual sudden bind. Because when you see it as only a practice aimed at realization, then if you see it that way, then all these things I'm talking about look like gradual steps toward realization.

[23:03]

And I think realization, the point is that it's always sudden. Not necessarily noticeably sudden, but still sudden. You may not be alert enough to Notice it because it's so sudden. I remember I gave a lecture once in an insane asylum. Where? In an insane asylum. And this guy was sitting there, a young man, and he said, While you were talking, I just went to New York. And I said to him, well, I didn't notice it.

[24:24]

He said, you weren't quick enough. And I said, I didn't notice it. And he said, you weren't quick enough. Enlightenment is sometimes like that. We hardly know we're enlightened, but we were. We are. Hmm. Hmm. So this also lets Buddhism as a practice through which we study ourselves and understand ourselves and the world fit in very nicely with Western ways of thinking and psychology.

[25:35]

But as a process of realization we have to look at it as a shift in world view. And that's enough to say about it. I think you can discover for yourself what I mean. Now sometimes I find I'm treating you guys a little bit too much like you are monks. And correcting you in little tiny things. And I apologize. But you know, in a monastery, it's sort of like, well, if I change things on the altar, I can move the incense burner because it's not in the center.

[26:53]

And then when I move it, I see I moved it too far and it's still not in the center. But the incense burner doesn't complain and say, Why is he moving me? I was all right where I was. So it's very nice to change the altar. It doesn't complain. And even if I do it wrong, it just as happily sits there with its incense smoking. But if I change you, sometimes you start smoking for other reasons. You get rather angry. I didn't do anything wise. So monks are not supposed to have feelings like that, so you can change them more easily. But lay people are supposedly characterized by getting angry about things.

[28:14]

But you know, we're fine-tuning. We're fine-tuning ourselves. And we're fine-tuning ourselves in relationship to our subtle body and our shared body. And I don't know how much I should say about this, but I don't know, today I thought I'd talk about it a little bit. And I'm working my way toward Koan 88 of the Hekigan Roku, the Blue Cliff Records.

[29:30]

I may not get there until 1998, but anyway, I hope to get there during the Sashin. Maybe we'll have a new year this week. That was shorter. Yeah. You guys are so much luckier than me. You understand twice as much. Shucks. Oh, well. I remember when I was at Tassajara, I used to walk with my arms down. And Sukhya, she would say,

[30:31]

Only old teachers can do that. And of course, when you had... This is a Rinzai Kuromo. But a Soto-shu Kuromo is about this big and about this big, the sleeve. So you have to keep your arms up because otherwise you're sweeping the ground all the time. They're specifically designed to make you keep your arms here. So old teachers are allowed to drag their robes in the dust. So... Okay, he told me not to, I don't know, you know, so I started walking around like this. So that went on for some weeks. Then he came by me and said, that doesn't look so good. Okay, so I started walking like this.

[31:39]

And I thought, well, you know, he's concerned with how I... I knew he was concerned with how I presented myself, how I looked. So I thought, well, maybe this looks better or something. And even once, you know... went with me and picked out my sandals because he thought I should have better looking sandals. Maybe he wanted me in shoes, but at least he got more shoe-like looking sandals. You know, I was just clay on the potter's wheel. But later I found out that this posture does two things. Or three or four things. One is, we could call it a clear hold.

[33:01]

There's nothing wrong with this posture. And it's voluntary. It doesn't come from the karma of the past. It forces your back to relax. If you hold your hands this way for all your waking hours for a few months, your back kills you. You have to kind of, oh my God, there's knives in your back. But if you persist, your back relaxes. So it's a strange kind of body training that is not so familiar to us. but it's actually a way of releasing a kind of inner massaging of the back, getting, go ahead.

[34:17]

Opening up all those somatic memories in the back. As I said the other day, a while ago to some of you, various parts of your body are rented by people in your past. Perhaps your mother has leased your left shoulder. And your father, your lower back. And they don't let go. You hardly know they're there. They're just collecting the rent. And at some point, they relax. And then these people that inhabit you, old lovers, friends, kids, bullied you when you were a child,

[35:19]

Move out of your body and begin inhabiting your psychic space. And then there's practices to work at clearing your psychic space. But we're not talking about that today, so let's leave that aside. In any case, one purpose is this clear hold opens up the field of the back where so much of our karma is stored. And they've tested this with rats, but not human beings. By cutting away the brain of a rat.

[36:39]

And you can keep cutting it away and the rat still has memories, still functions, still does its basic habits. So it's clear that memory is a... not a single unit storage process, but a complex mass storage process located throughout the body. So that's one purpose. Another purpose is that it begins to make you an antenna. This is the kind of thing one doesn't talk about much.

[37:44]

Because it sounds weird and it sounds like personal power. But it's... commonplace, taken for granted in yogic cultures. And it's clear that the more there's personality involved, or even ego, the less it happens. Although I don't need to quote a study to know that this is the case, Studies indicate that when a person meditates, very quickly their left and right hemispheres of their brain develop identical wave patterns.

[38:51]

And if a group of people meditate together, all the hemispheres begin sharing identical wave patterns. Now this is, as far as I know, only been tested up to a dozen people. But I'm sure it works here with four dozen. I'm quite sure that we are very connected. And we can interfere with that or we can open ourselves to it. What makes my job of giving lectures much easier? There's less inertia. Less?

[40:04]

Less inertia? Inertia, yeah. Es ist mehr so... What is it? I know how it's written. Inertia? Trägheit, ne? Wie? Weniger Trägheit. Weniger Trägheit, ja. Ja. I hope it's right. Sounds good. That could be... Yeah, I like... Anyway... It's like there's the three-dimensional, seamless, seamless-seeming world we inhabit. And there's a big pool of water flowing in which we are all standing. or that we're all immersed in that doesn't appear to our senses.

[41:07]

That's just the way it is. But it's useful to know it's that way even though it's not within our senses. So a phrase that Mike Murphy uses, somatic architecture. There's a somatic architecture which makes us more of an antenna or less of one. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Just like there's various, when you sleep, there's various postures you take, which are a kind of architecture.

[42:11]

So you learn that you're an antenna, that we're sending and receiving. And just like an automobile, you sometimes retract the antenna. Because it's politer. But in zazen posture, lotus posture is a very powerful antenna. Now, this is all partly because I wanted to say something about Kinhin. Sukhiyoshi used to spend quite a lot of time teaching us Kinhin. In Sesshin, there are many of the early Sesshins where we'd all... practice Kinhin together and he'd stand up and show us and so forth.

[43:23]

Now I learned over the years many different forms of Kinhin. From Sukhiroshi and from visiting teachers. But we finally, Sukhiroshi and also myself, settled on one way to teach. And to understand one way of Kenyan thoroughly was probably the best way for us Westerners. So little by little I will mention various aspects of Kinhin.

[44:26]

So today I will give you some suggestions. You can stay seated. And don't blow your nose, please. It's hard to make my robes work. This is supposed to be exactly parallel with this, in line with, and this lower one is supposed to be exactly in line with that. And I should be able to wear the robes, so these are always in a straight line, and I don't, this right now, pretty good. This is part of the fine tuning that the robes are required to bring you into.

[45:31]

But you know, I'm such a strange, I have such strange proportions. for a Japanese and even for a Westerner. But the robe makers had a very hard time trying to place the ropes so this works for me. Anyway, so, Hin Hin is Walking meditation. And when we're doing walking meditation, it's really not kin hin. When we're walking fast. So your feet start out this distance apart.

[46:31]

Once it's understood that that's the way to stand, then if Sukershi was talking to me with his ankles together, I know he's saying something with his body that's contrapuntal to what he's saying with his voice. Now, because I know he's conscious where his ankles are, so they're not there, then he's saying something to me or to the situation. Maybe it's too strange to introduce this stuff to you, but this is what was introduced to me, so I'm sharing.

[47:51]

Listen, this was before New Age, I mean the New Age. This was particularly strange to me. It was 1960, 1961. Before some of you were born. Anyway, so your feet are like that. And then your thumb is in your left hand. And that's also a particular mudra. And it's... And then you put your hand around it. And then you put it at the middle of your body so that your forearm is parallel to the floor.

[48:58]

Then you put your other hand on top of it. This is too... So here she would explain it like this was too relaxed and this is too rigid and this was a little more alert and turned up slightly. Yeah. Now, sometimes we just stand. And standing can be a form of meditation too, of course. When we do that, your knees are slightly bent. And your weight is only lightly on your heels. Your hips are pulled in slightly. And anyway, you can stand with some vitality like that in service and things like that for a long period of time.

[50:23]

I know that we don't do it very often. It's also sometimes in practice. We would just stand up and then the teacher just lets you stand there for 20 minutes. There's no... it doesn't necessarily have to be ki in hand, it doesn't have to be meditate, they just stand there and then the picture will move and then they all move. So there's an unpredictability to the schedule, but within a rather precise schedule that you follow, except when it's unpredictable. There's a rule in the Zen-do that only the abbot, or the teacher, or sometimes the Ino, can cross in front of the altar like I just did.

[51:38]

Everyone else has to go back there. And this is just completely arbitrary. And that is just completely random. It has no meaning. If there was a meaning to it, I couldn't cross. bolt of lightning. And I cross not because I'm an athlete, I cross just because someone should show that it's arbitrary. But knowing that begins to create a thematic large body of architecture in the room. But if you know that, then it helps to create a large somatic architecture body, so to speak.

[52:43]

Yes, like on Sunday, those who will still be here, when we have cleared this room, what kind of another room will it then be? So Kin Hin, and your teacher, like I said, more or less feet are straight out. And you step forward usually first with your left foot. You step forward half a foot. Now the engine engine of Kinyin is your breath. And so you step forward as you exhale. And then you inhale as you lift your back heel. And then you step forward as you Now that's the simple instruction.

[54:11]

And Bill Kwong, where she said an interesting thing, which I haven't heard anybody say, but it's quite true, when you do kin-hin right, you start to cry. Or quite often your eyes start Okay, now a more subtle description would be, I step, I have one foot forward. As I lift with the heel in the back, I feel a pathway going from my heel up the back of my leg and up my side. Through my body and up to here. So we say it's a kind of heel breathing. You're breathing through your heel. But it's a kind of subtle body energy thing which you feel coming up, up that line from your heel to here.

[55:33]

So then as you step forward, Exhale, but you also exhale your supple breath down through your body like this and out the foot. And when you then lift the next foot, the heel, again you push in your kneecap a little. And this feeling goes up and comes to here again, but from the other side. And what you've done is create a kind of somatic pyramid. Now, I've only two or three times ever in the West described this because I think it's too strange for most people.

[56:40]

So this is an experiment. And then? Now once you get the feeling of it, and it's also an image, you don't have to hold the image. Once you have the feeling of the image, it begins to function in you while you walk. Once that image is in place in you, It's very energizing. There's a tremendous vitality in just walking slowly. And this kind of standing statue is meant to have that energy in it. Sometimes they're actually shown walking. And that's accompanied by your breath, your physical, ordinary breath, exhaling and inhaling.

[58:20]

So if you get the feeling of that pretty soon in Kinhin, after even a few steps, you're bathed in a kind of energy and light. Now, when you, you can also understand or imagine that when you tip your hands up, I'm getting even stranger here. When you tip your hands up, there's a little string and it pulls open a little lid here. Like some cars have little things over their headlights. I'm using cars and computers as the only complicated thing we know much about. A little lid up there and a light comes out. And when you do the upper part, you pull down the window, and the window opens up here.

[59:55]

So there's a feeling of a window here and a light here. And they're both controlled by this handbook. This is another subtlety of this hand posture Suzuki Roshi tried to teach me. So the level with the floor of the forearms grounds you. Two feet are together in the way I said. And then you open this window and turn on this light. And now this is, as I said, I'm playing with our usual body image. And then you walk and you begin to find yourself entrained with, really connected with, the people around you in the situation.

[61:06]

And your breathing begins to massage your subtle body. Now, when we do faster kinhin, which we could call group walking or something like that. Now we don't walk in a straight line just because it would be pretty hard to walk to a breast in this room. We don't walk in a straight line outside because the path is narrow. The main reason we walk in a straight line for this kind of practice is that now the engine of your walking is the person in front of you.

[62:11]

So opening this, turning on this light and opening this window. Now this connects you to the person in front of you. You feel a certain bond and you can feel if the person is too far, you lose it, too close, it doesn't work either. And then you lock yourself in that field and you can lock almost with your eyes closed. You don't want to look exactly where you're going, you want to feel where you're going. Given our corners and the fact that we have the bulls halfway in the aisle, you have to look a little, but as much as possible you don't look too much.

[63:25]

And then once you feel that, you can walk pretty fast. Generally, we try not to walk with our heels, so you walk slowly. I mean, you walk silently. You know, if you watch Germans walking in the mountains and English people walking in the mountains, they walk quite differently. Each culture has a stride in the way they walk. It's different. And in Japan, Zen monks often study with no actors, although no actors probably originally learned it. No theater, no age. Excuse me, could you repeat it again? Zen monks sometimes go and study walking with no theater people.

[64:40]

Although probably no theater people learned it originally from those times. It's a way of walking where you keep your heart at level and you slide forward. Your knees are slightly bent as you do. You feel like something very level like this, which is a different kind of walking than usual. And the Buddha was asked, what should we know of the earth? And the Buddha said, it's obvious, we should know the body thoroughly. What else should we know thoroughly?

[65:42]

Well, it's obvious, we should know the mind thoroughly. And what else should we know thoroughly? That's also obvious, we should know phenomena. And it is also obvious that we should know the phenomena thoroughly. And so it is in all of Buddhism about such simple things. And this tension between the body, the mind and the phenomena is very central to this kind of yogic culture. Now, one of the things they do in a no theater, we imagine this is with a no stage. There's an invisible line across the middle of the stage. And it's only marked by the way a person walks across it. And when they're like here, they're walking in a way that is in our ordinary, immediate consciousness.

[66:56]

And when they change slightly their way of walking in body, they step into a timeless realm. And as soon as they step back, as soon as they step back, they know their dead grandmother is crazy. And past, future and present are all intermingled. It's a kind of panoramic memory of near-death experience. And this relates to what I said, the Zen Do should be another world.

[67:57]

And as we come in the door, we should have the feeling we're stepping across that kind of invisible line. Into a realm where we are going to meet everybody in our life as brothers and sisters. And that's a physical sense carried in your body and carried into this room. So it's a kind of psychological practice, you could say, but it's something we do together to create a timeless space for each other. So the way we walk in Kenyan is also a way that we're beginning to step on into each other's dreams. On and into each other's dreams.

[69:06]

I think that's enough for now. It's a way of walking into our own mind. In a way it creates an entrainment. Do you know the word entrainment? Like grandfather, grandmother clocks all swing together in the same house. Or athletes perform better if they're entrained with another athlete. So this practice is an entrainment with each other. And the word for body in Chinese, for example, means a share of the whole, a part of the whole.

[71:10]

You can't say exactly it's your body, you say it's my part of the whole. When you say that to yourself over and over again, you begin to think about yourself in the world differently. There are some other things I want to talk about, but it's five o'clock.

[72:11]

This kind of practice is good to begin to notice little things. Like physical tremors. Tremors is like... Tremors what? These elliptical things? Physical tremors. Tremors, yeah. Like your upper lip might begin to throb. Or maybe there's some itch somewhere on your cheek. Or maybe there's a funny sensation, achy sensation inside your forearm.

[73:14]

Now, in this kind of practice, we don't ignore those things. Or move your arm to make the feeling go away. Or scratch the itch. Rather you create a kind of wide state of mind that doesn't interfere with these strange sensations or unusual tremors. And I'm only giving you a few examples. But you let them happen as Just like you don't invite your thoughts to tea, you don't invite these tiny things, tiny sensations to tea.

[74:24]

But you also don't throw them out of the house. And you don't ignore your guests. But you let them do what they want. You'll be surprised how much your body starts to communicate with you, the more you can let these little things happen. How subtle half-formed images or sensations. How subtle half-formed images or sensations. begin to take form as you allow them the mind, this spacious mind.

[75:28]

It's like even in the Walking in kin hin, if no one breaks the link, the last person can feel the first person. This is not something to be achieved exactly. And I'm not saying this is something you should try to do even. My point is and my belief is and my experience is that it's always happening. And you're only shutting it off or opening yourself to it. And I think you should know that you have that choice.

[76:29]

I think you should know that you have this choice. Thank you for translating. O Lord, hear my prayer. O Lord, hear my prayer.

[77:47]

We've stood out of the war, but we've shown all of us the same gallant job. If you think it's a good thing, it's a good thing to write. If you think it's a good thing, it's a good thing to write. The liberation of the ASEAN countries is the only way to achieve it. It is the only way to achieve it. You may have noticed, this is a mandala. So when I fold it like this, it makes a more specific mandala. So it's called a bodhi mandala. Which means that any spot can be the spot in the light.

[79:12]

And it's done so that I can make the mandala, it just isn't built into the cloth. So the robe is supposed to turn you into a walking altar. And I guarantee you sometimes it's nice just to go out and have a hanged pils, bitte. Not allowed to do if you're wearing robes, supposedly. So please relax. Satsang with Mooji

[82:19]

Tare manken manshi juji suru koto etari negawa kuwa nyorai wo shen jutsu giyo deshi tate matsuran An unsurpassed, transcendent and perfect Dharma can only be found in the hundreds of thousands of millions of Kalpas. Now that I can listen to it, remember it and accept it, I promise to experience the truth of the Tathagata. Yeah, good afternoon.

[83:56]

And Guni's still sick. Oh dear. I hate to think if any of us are sick. And you're a bit sick. Are you feeling better? You? A bit better? Oh yeah. I like this Buddha up here very much, the one at the top. I used to make fun of him because he looks drunk. Smashed is a word in English for drunk. But actually, I think it's quite a wonderful Buddha.

[84:56]

I think it should probably be in a museum, but I'm glad it's here. First of all, he's not too pretty like most of us. And he's got a very particular face, not just an idealized face. And he seems to be checking up on something out to his left. Like with a corner of his mind, he's wondering how the serving is going on on the left. And he's got a little sneer to his face. Miles suggests that in ordinary life he's probably kind of arrogant.

[86:05]

And yet he looks like he's deep in meditation at the same time. Smashed by bliss. That sounds like a good turn of phrase. So it does have a real feeling of a particular person who also is able to hold his meditation. Now in this room there are, you know, 47 Sashins and one is up in the house somewhere.

[87:10]

Maybe there's three Sashins going on here for each of us. Each of you has your own Sashin. And you have the Sashin that's influenced by my lectures. And you have a Sashin influenced by being here with everyone. This is just normal. Or usual. Yes. So I'm speaking today about the sense of interpenetrating worlds in Buddhism.

[88:12]

For example, the rule about an answering bow. For example, if Neil bows to his cushion, and when Neil turns around and bows to the room, the person directly opposite him, or if it's two people, would bow. And the two people on either side of him would bow. Now that rule in some zendos means even during the middle of zazen, but I think it should only apply to the beginning of a zazen period. But what's interesting is the person on the opposite wall who's facing the wall should also bow.

[89:25]

This is rather subtle. It's like when you feel someone looking at you and your back is turned. But that's a rule in Zen Do. But this is a rule for the sendos, in the Soto sendos, is that the person way across the room, for instance, Gerald, if he was facing the wall from me, should know what I'm doing and bow, even if he cannot see me. And it's interesting. When you go into a zendo and you see somebody bow, you can see a way across a large room. It's quite interesting. So these little rules reflect an interpenetration of minds.

[90:36]

Do you see? Do you understand? I notice some of you, and it happens, I only see it in the West, is when you receive the wastewater, You look away. And I've only seen this in the West. I've never seen it in Japan. And I'm sure it comes from Japan, but I don't know who it comes from, but it's a lot of people in the West who do it, who've been in other Sesshins than mine.

[91:37]

And that kind of aspect of Japanese Buddhism I have decided not to adopt. Because it's based on Shinto ideas of purity. where waste, water, sickness, menstruation are all considered, should be away from, excluded from life. I mean, Japanese culture has this Shinto aspect where it emphasizes marriage and bright shiny things and the Buddhist act which takes care of funerals and death and sickness.

[92:46]

And one reason, you know, many Tibetans have come to the West, luckily for us, unluckily for them, because the Chinese have chased them out of Tibet. But a number of Japanese teachers have come to the West because they've gotten tired of doing funeral ceremonies. Seriously?

[93:25]

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