I'm sorry I haven't been coming to the Orioki meals in the morning. I was particularly looking forward to them because I enjoy them with everyone. But I seem to need to sleep in the morning. So anyway, so that's what I did. Now we're faced with this obscure problem I brought up. We could be faced by it. Which was why Tsukiyoshi for several years really emphasized the application, let's call it that, of teaching devices rather than teaching us much about Buddhism.

[01:26]

Yeah, but before I see if I can say something about that, is there anything anybody would like to bring up concerning, because, you know, I really want these doorsteps in as, if they could be, as my encountering your practice. Or your way, at least, of trying to make sense of things I say. Or making sense. So any colleagues joining the fray? The fray means the interaction, the situation.

[02:46]

Yesterday I was very much concerned about the fact that Iwata brought in one aspect, not shooting the first arrow. I was very engaged with what Ivo said yesterday about not shooting the second arrow. And it fell together also with what you said about our coming together, working together within the Sangha and with each other. And that concerns all the paramitas in the brahmaviharas, all the practices that we do. How do I use them? And not, you know, I'm intending good, but in reality I'm shooting one of those arrows.

[04:20]

How did you understand to not shoot the second arrow? Wenn jemand, wenn ich in der Präsenz zum Beispiel von jemand bin und er hat ein Leiden und ich möchte ihm helfen. For example, when I'm in the presence of somebody and that person is suffering and I would like to help. And then to say the right thing. And to take my ego away, to take my pedagogy away. And what did you mean by not shooting the second arrow? In a difficult situation, In a difficult situation, not to add to the pain additional suffering.

[05:43]

Okay. Is that a Swiss or German expression? In German it is kein Öl ins Feuer gießen. So not to pour oil into the fire. Oh, fire, don't put oil in the water. Yeah, in Zen usually to shoot the second arrow means the first arrow, the first thing you said only touched them somewhat. The second arrow transformed them. So the first arrow, as she said, didn't reach the guy, but the second arrow penetrated deeply. So when Ivo said that yesterday, I said, oh, Ivo, please shoot the second arrow. Yeah, and you wanted someone, everyone else... I found it very...

[07:02]

I found it renewing for myself when Roshi said, when he's talking to someone, to first enter into the field. The context. And I believe that we do it in some way or the other. And to really be aware of it and with that kind of awareness or consciousness let a talk develop, that came to my mind, that became clearer to me.

[08:14]

I also understood that attentional attunement And I understood this attentional attunement in that way, that in contrast to mindfulness, it includes the context and And the person. It's kind of like an attention to the whole relational field and relationship. That's the idea, yeah. One more remark. I was very impressed. I went to bed after Zazen right away. I was impressed how what an impact it had on me and was resonating within me all what we had talked about.

[09:52]

Not mentally or thinking in a thinking way? And something all pops up and it's like there is some talk going on, some conversation, continuing. Here, somebody. Oh, there. Yes, hi. I was still very busy, Roshi, with what you told me. I was very concerned and it occupied me what you said, Roshi, about your reaction to society when you were a young kid. Mm-hmm. That you already sensed that something is not quite right and that it's a false construct.

[10:53]

I am much more naive. It took me a long time to ask that question. And I also wonder if it is a condition for the Zen path And I'm more naive and it took me a long time. And I think it's a prerequisite for practicing Zen or Buddhism to question and not believe what is being told to you. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you caught up. Gut, dass du dich angeschlossen hast, aufgeholt hast. And also what popped up is when you answered or responded to the question, are you responding to a question in a psychological or therapeutic way or in the dharmic way?

[12:04]

People ask you, you just give them back the question and they experience it as having given an advice. I find that very fascinating. If something is really on my mind, I imagine sometimes I'm in dog sun and I fantasize... That's what's disturbing my sleep. What would you say to that? And sometimes I really get good answers. It's fascinating. I'm continuously talking to you. Really? People do that? I hear you singing.

[13:34]

I don't hear you talking. I'm glad I'm a kind of sounding board. But do other people do that? No one would admit it but you. Okay. Okay. So Suzuki Roshi comes to America. And he always wanted to come to America. Partly, you know, he had weird feelings like... Buddhism needed some kind of fresh context. And he also didn't like the reputation America had where everything that was cheap was made in Japan, sort of like made in China now. Yeah. So maybe even he didn't want Buddhism to be made in Japan.

[14:56]

So he wanted to definitely came to sort of rethink Buddhism in America. Yeah. But in the most traditional sense, I say most traditional because Dogen did prepare his lectures And as a result, we have some volumes of his writing. So anyway, Dogen made a decision, I'm sure, that didn't... Anyway, just leave it. Dogen made that decision. But the tradition is you don't prepare for lectures.

[15:58]

You arrive innocent, ignorant, and see what happens. Of course, you may have some ideas before you come because you are alive. And you assume the people you're with are alive. And something will happen through that. Now, if you were in a university and you were studying a particular aspect of Buddhism, then you're studying something that already exists. But the Zen Dharma tradition arises from the situation. So he comes to America and some people come and knock on the door of the Zen Soto Mission.

[17:07]

1881 Bush Street. And it's been a synagogue before it was a Zen Buddhist temple. And the Japanese community was incarcerated in camps in Arizona and New Mexico and places like that. Yeah, in other places. And it was basically a land grab where people... confiscated Japanese farmlands, and the Japanese were better farmers than the white folks, and they resented them and took their land.

[18:31]

Now, I've told you, some of you, I mean, maybe I've never told you the anecdote about the Japanese tea garden in Golden Gate Park. Guess not. Well, next year I'll tell you. No, I'll tell you not. Because it illustrates the seriousness of the situation Sukershi entered. Anyway, the Japanese congregation somehow scraped together the tax money, property tax money, and kept ownership of the building during the years they were incarcerated.

[19:42]

And George Hagiwara's father was... one of the reasons the Japanese community in San Francisco blamed the Soto-shu mission and George Hagiwara's father partly for the incarceration. And the Japanese community blamed. Blamed? The Soto Zen Mission in particular, because George Hargiwara's father was head of the Soto Zen Mission as the member of the congregation. George Hagiwara. Hagiwara, okay. And Mr. Hagiwara, I never knew the father, but it was one of the leading families in San Francisco, Japanese families, and they owned the Japanese tea garden.

[20:48]

Do you know the story? Well, from the Japanese point of view, in a no play or a kabuki, George Hagiwara was a great loyalist to the emperor of Japan. And so the Americans Navy off the coast of California were getting signals coming from the San Francisco area to Japanese warships which were off coast too. So they set up a triangulation, and by gosh, the signals were coming from the Japanese tea garden in Golden Gate Park.

[22:10]

And the Golden Gate Park tea garden had a stupa, and on top of the, you know, that was a sending station to the Japanese warships. So when this was discovered, it was clear that the Japanese couldn't be trusted, they were all potential traitors, and they should be taken out of San Francisco. And the Japanese community asked George Hagiwara's father to commit harakiri, to kill himself.

[23:40]

And he refused. And George's sister who I never met, obviously, on the steps of the Japanese tea house, disemboweled herself. Harakiri means your hara, to cut, to disembowel yourself. So then there was the exodus and transportation by trains in all the Japanese communities of California. So after the war, when the Japanese community was freed, they went back to San Francisco and Most of the neighborhood of the Japanese had become the black community in San Francisco.

[25:00]

Now the Fillmore District. And so the Japanese community kind of reformed itself in one area, and at the center of that was the Sōtoshū Mission, the former synagogue. Yeah, you know, as you can see, for me, the narrative that glues these situations together is what really happened, is how you understand what really happened. Yeah. Anyway, so... So not too many people wanted to be the priest of that temple.

[26:21]

Yeah, but there was a guy, what was his name? I can't think of it now. But he influenced quite a number of artists, influenced Alan Watts and other people. And he was a calligrapher. And he influenced... And he influenced the beat poets, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder and so forth. Okay. So finally they couldn't find a priest and they asked Sukhiroshi if he would come. And Sukhiroshi had wanted to find a new context for Buddhism. But his teacher and maybe others kept interfering with his teachings.

[27:27]

desire to go to America. But he finally, this was like the third time he'd been invited in some context, if I remember correctly, and they kind of reluctantly let him go from his temple in Shizuoka. Shizuoka. Some of you are going to Shizuoka in a few days. Anyway, So they gave him money to buy Western clothes and things like that, you know.

[28:46]

And then people went to see him off at the airport, and there he was in his robes and his hat, his straw hat and everything. And they said, well, what happened to the money? We gave you for dressing like a westerner. He said, I'm a monk. I'm a priest. This is the way I'm going to dress. So he got to San Francisco, and the first thing he did, he went out begging on the streets of San Francisco, you know, with his little hat and things like that. People knew, what the hell is this guy up to? And when he went to the grocery stores, he always tried to buy the worst fruit to leave the better fruit for other people. But then he thought that's a form of vanity because I'm trying to get the merit by buying the damaged fruit and I'm

[30:02]

preventing other people from getting the merit to buy the devil. And then he thought, that is idleness, that he gets the reward or the reward for buying the bad fruit, and thus prevents others from getting this reward when they buy the bad fruit. And after, I don't know how long, but if I remember correctly, about six weeks, he decided this didn't work. And he lived in the... left-hand tower, I think, of the synagogue, which was a room, a little room, about as big as from me to you guys. And that's the only room he had. But after a while... After a while, some people, Betty Warren and a few other people, knocked on the door and said, does anybody do Zen practice here?

[31:34]

And he said, I sit at five every morning. If you want to join me, just come. So people began sitting with him. Okay. So here he's in this temple, which was considered, you know, a... I can't think of the word, discredited. And... But it was... I knew George Hagiwara pretty well. We were friends. I mean, I'm 20 years old. four or five, and he's, I don't know, 50 or something, but we were kind of friends.

[32:46]

But you'd walk down the street with him speaking English. And we'd go up the stairs into 1881 Bush Street. As we passed through the door, he started speaking Japanese, and the whole time he would not speak English to me in the building. Inside the building, it was Japan, and they would not speak English. And we, you know, we almost got thrown out of the building. After a while, Suzuki Roshi got them to be willing to have us white folks come into the building.

[33:48]

And we were almost thrown out of the building. Suzuki Roshi then managed to get us out of the building. But California at those days were all about hiking and, you know, that's where North Face and Sierra Designs and things all started. These camping equipment all started at that time in the 60s. And somebody came in, had been hiking, and they hung their boots, they weren't wearing them, over the back of a chair. And the whole congregation had a meeting about it because to take your boots, which belong on the floor, and hang them on a chair was so insensitive, they actually wanted us to leave the building.

[35:04]

And I remember the boots. They weren't mine. But they were just hung by their shoelaces, you know. Anyway, we had to learn. So Tsukuyoshi is in the midst of that with the Japanese congregation discredited in the rest of the Japanese community. And still this is Japan inside the building and not the West. And then these white folks kept wanting to practice with him. I wanted to practice with him. Yeah, that I have. I lost something in the middle. Okay. So it was a big political accomplishment of his to get the Japanese congregation to let us do Zazen in the building.

[36:45]

First, could the Japanese congregation accept these folks who, us, me, and others, who had basically been part of the land grab that took all our land away from them? Also die erste Frage war ja, konnte die japanische Gemeinde Leute wie uns akzeptieren, die ja eigentlich Teil von dieser Landübernahme waren? And except for some exceptions like the Hagiwara family, most Japanese people were really loyal Americans and ready to fight in the war against Japan. So again, he's in this situation, the Japanese community not really wanting him to relate to the American practitioners, and his feeling that they were, that all the Japanese people wanted from his funeral ceremonies.

[38:06]

Und da ist er eben in dieser Situation, wo die Japaner eigentlich nicht so gerne möchten, dass er mit diesen weißen Leuten praktiziert, die aber wirklich an Zen interessiert sind. Und die japanische Gemeinde wollte eigentlich mehr oder weniger nur Beerdigungsbestattungszeremonie. And one thing he asked me to do was to attend all the funeral ceremonies. And this was an old congregation, so they were dying, you know, monthly. So once or twice a month I'd go to these big funeral ceremonies. But we would finally get permission. We turned one room into a zendo. That we could use most days, not all days.

[39:10]

Okay. So one day, and I'll just jump to another anecdote. The Americans are sitting... We all sat in chairs. In Zazen, there were tatamis laid along the side of the walls, and we sat on these tatamis laid on the floor. But during lectures, we sat on these red folding plastic, metal red plastic sort of folding chairs. Also die Tatamis lagen auf dem Boden, wenn wir Sasseln gemacht haben, aber während der Vorträge haben wir auf solchen roten Plastik-Klappstühlen gesessen. And the ventilation in the room wasn't very good, and sometimes people would say, can we open a window, or could we close that window, there's a draft, and so forth like that.

[40:15]

Und die Luft und die Zirkulation in dem Raum war nicht besonders gut, sodass ab und zu jemand gefragt hat, könnten wir vielleicht ein Fenster aufmachen, oder die Tür zumachen, oder dies... And since I was the person who regularly he asked to read, I sat right in the front. And somebody was saying, can we open that window or can't we do this or something? Securus, he mumbled under his breath, why don't you just adjust your body heat? So when he said that, sotto voce, I realized, hey, that's my new practice. But this is for Jönitz.

[41:17]

If we really wanted to make this more of a Japanese-Chinese zendo, right, Those north doors which are closed would take off. We'd put in big sliding doors, and those doors would be open almost all year long. And if you complained about the draft or complained about the cold, that was your problem. Hot Buddha, cold Buddha. Yeah, I mean, when I go in there and I've so, I think, wouldn't somebody open the window?

[42:21]

And then I think, I'm the abbot, I could probably go open the window. But I know people get mad at me later. They say there was a draft on the back of my neck or something, so I don't do it. Yeah, also, eigentlich bin ich ja der Abt und ich komm da rein und denke, könnte nicht mal jemand das Fenster aufmachen und ich dürfte das ja als Abt. Aber dann könnte es sein, dass sich jemand beklagt, weißt du, das hat einen Zug gegeben und... So, Jonas is here, and Matthieu from Belgium, who's inheriting my brother-in-law's Japanese wood joinery shops and building and house. Anyway, Mathieu is who built this staircase and built our Zendo. And he's finally, after some years, gotten permission to live in America.

[43:41]

So before he goes, he wants to look at whether we should do something about those north doors and maybe more seats or something like that. Yeah, but, you know, Jonas, you could sign a little shelfy roof over there, and we can just take those doors off. I would remain Abbott very long. Okay, so Sukhiroshi was in a situation like that. Why don't these people adjust their body heat? What's going on? Where do I find a... So his view is he comes into a room and he feels the liquid of the room and the liquid of the room starts percolating in him and he starts giving a Dharma talk.

[44:59]

And so he didn't know. Nothing's percolating here. What do I say? How can I teach the Dharma unless people here have the field, the feel of the field which receives the Dharma in a kind of shared way? So he started to say, well, I'll read them the 100 koans, see what happens. So then he started reading the 100 koans to us. Once a week. And he began emphasizing these teaching devices.

[46:02]

And he said that for two or three years, seeing if the liquid would develop, Okay, I think I ought to stop there. To be continued the next winter break. No. So let's have a break. And I hope it's okay with you. I'm telling this in a very anecdotal fashion.

[47:08]

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