You know, we don't have a gatehouse at Creston. Wir haben kein gatehouse. Gatehouse, yeah. A gate. Yeah, wir haben kein tourhaus in Creston. And we've never been able to manage the logistics and money and so forth. Wir hatten das mit der Logistik nicht hinbekommen und auch mit dem Geld nicht. But I have two great, we have two great, I like, Korean statues. that would go on either side of the gate. And Heiji has a gate, a huge gate, where you come in and upstairs, where you never see, there's the 16 Arhats. And these are life-sized statues.

[01:01]

And in China they have 18 Arhats, in Japan 16. And they're a kind of popular... popular kind of enlightened crazy person. Or just some far out city or shaman. And I found actually Two Chinese, that's a long story, but one Chinese version and they packed it badly and it got destroyed and then they sent me another one they found in China somewhere or somewhere and then we got the other one repaired and now the repaired one can come here.

[02:15]

Of what? Of the 18 Arhats. It's not life-size. I thought it was one. No. Anyway, I've always wanted them for our centers, but, you know, I found them this size one time, 16, but they were like several thousand dollars apiece. They were intact. There were 16. Anyway, I found these and... And it's kind of, it's on a wooden stand that's shaped like Chinese rock caves.

[03:24]

It's a little schmalzy, but you know. But the statues are pretty nicely carved. And they look like ivory, but they're bone. And if they were ivory, they'd be confiscated coming into Germany and burned. So luckily they're both. Anyway, I had these shattered statues repaired for $1,400. And if we can get them in, German customs agrees to let them come in based on a $1,400 price. Which is actually, it's much more actually.

[04:28]

So anyway, I think they can be sent, maybe they're in route soon. I think they can be sent and they will be in route soon if they're not here. By the way, you might be interested that in addition to something else being in route, is that right now or in the next days, if not now, they're putting at least the beginning part of my unawaited book on the internet. So anyway, they're putting the beginning, I don't know, a few pages, 30 or 40 pages. There's other sections that can be put on, we'll figure it out.

[05:31]

And I assume there will be a link from the Dharma Sangha Europe website to the American website. And I talked to the publisher last year about it. who 25 years ago paid me quite a bit of money for the book and I said you know I'm going to put it on the internet I kind of asked their permission because I long ago told them don't send me any more money Anyway, they said, well, this isn't our favorite way to publish a book, but you're hopeless, and so go ahead.

[06:36]

So the 18 Arhats are in route, and some texts are in route. Okay. Anyway, you come into the Eheji gate. And it's one of those unseen spaces. Most people don't have any idea that this big room, I mean, it's a huge room. You know something's up there, but you... So anyway, I'd like to put these two Korean figures we have in a gate eventually at Crestone. Maybe I have these future plans to try to keep myself alive. Yeah, build a gate when I'm 90.

[07:38]

Yeah, and here when I'm eight, no. Any case, so because we don't have a gate at Crestone, I use the Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva compassion as a gate. And many of you know that statue. It was a Japanese commission for the... It's about eight feet tall. And you built a small stand for underneath. It really makes a difference. Right. It's about eight feet tall, I guess. And a really beautiful face. Looks a little like Eureka or Nicole. So it's a beautiful young woman's face in this painting. It's part of the statue.

[09:10]

And it was, again, a commission met by the Japanese government for the Hiroshima-Roshima Peace Park. Yeah. after the nuclear bomb and all that. So the sculptor seems to, and often you cast a bell or a sculpture and then you look at it and then you melt it down and make another one, et cetera, in the same cast. In the same mold. And I guess the sculptor, nobody knows, I mean it would be not public, liked this one so much he didn't melt it down and he gave it to a friend. And the one that's not melted, the one that's in the Hiroshima Peace Park, these two fingers are touching.

[10:33]

And in the one we have, the fingers are slightly separated. And that might be why he made a second. But this anyway really is a marvelous, I don't know why we're so lucky to have it, but it's a marvelous statue. At some point he was sold to Roberto Agnolini in Colorado Springs. And he's become a friend and he wanted us to have this statue because it was the symbol of his shop. He had a kind of grand shop in Colorado Springs. Antique and jewelry and stuff. So he, anyway, arranged for us to have it at a nominal price. Do you have that idea? Nominal? And, you know, and so we have it.

[12:19]

And it particularly interested me, interests me, because I also studied to some extent in graduate school why German scientists didn't build, make an atomic, a nuclear weapon when they could have probably, and American scientists did, and so forth. It's pretty clear the American scientists had reservations about doing it, but they also got excited just to see if it could be done. Anyway, so an atomic bomb was developed right south of Crosstown in New Mexico. And the first was tested in Alamogordo, which is also Alamosa, I mean the tree.

[13:32]

And in the southern part of New Mexico. So the statue is important to me because of all of that that somehow to have the statue in a Buddhist temple is great. So the statue And we have a photograph of the one in the Hiroshima Peace Museum right beside it. So when I'm giving the introduction to the place, a tour or visitors or something.

[14:43]

Since we don't have a gate, I tell this story as a gate. And I describe what's typical of Buddhist iconography. She's standing on a lotus pod. And she's holding the stem of a lotus plant. which has the curled up lotus embryo on it and has an unopened bud and she's standing there marvelously composed in a posture of presence and stillness with bronze Excuse me?

[15:55]

It's bronze. And then I say to people, when you see the lotus embryo and the bud and the pot, I say, where's the bloom? Yeah, so typical of Buddhist iconography The bloom is your looking at it. That the statue is an activity. And your relationship to it is part of the iconography. So I try to make people feel without being too explicit. But as they walk through the temple or the place, the location and the zendo and stuff, they are walking within and participating in the bloom of the lotus flower.

[17:07]

Now a Buddhist temple gate is supposed to do something like that. When you come in, it should make you begin to enter into the space of the of the practice compound. Okay. Now what I'd like to do, what I think would be best to do right now, is for us to break up into small groups. Because your discussion among each other is always better than when I'm present. Probably always. And at least it's in Deutsch. But we should have an English group for these foreigners here.

[18:20]

If he wants to join the English group, Dorcas, you have to join the English group. You're just a disguised American. Yeah, I just blew it. I'm sorry. That sounds American. So what I'd hoped you to discuss is what now we have this compound in these additional buildings is what would you like to do with them? Now, Catherine had this far-out idea the other day of just expanding the walls and building a bigger, you know, and he took it seriously, as he should.

[19:29]

So I think any idea is good. I mean, one of the nice things in a Zendo complex is what's called the shuryo. Shuryo? Shuryo. Shuryo is room and shu is study. A Shuryo is like a Zendo. There's a little platform and you sit on it, but it's for your books and stuff and you can sit and study there with other people one after another. And I'm sure in the contemporary monastery in the Shuryo will be an iPad. You mean the Shuryo doesn't have internet? I'm not coming to this monastery. Yeah, it's going to be like that. Anyway, so a shurio or a gate or another kitchen or a playground.

[20:58]

In some way the local community, the local farmers and others who live here could... use the space with us? And should we have small apartments for couples and families? And should we have a kennel for Felix's dog? A kennel, not a camel. He has a dog. There's a good in here. Yeah, I know. A kennel. A kennel for dogs. Well, the kennel can be quite big. Not a cage.

[21:53]

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