Well, I'm very grateful to be here with all of you. And you must all be a pretty large percentage of the people I've been practicing with the most during the last few years in Europe. A few of you, two or three of you, are pretty new. For some reason I don't fully understand. Or the circumstances that led you to be here, but you're here, so I hope it's okay with you. And so most of you, or many of you, most of you know each other, but a few of you don't know each other. Now I'd like us to, well, what are we going to do this weekend?

[01:27]

And how did this weekend arise? I didn't have any special plan to do this just over The last couple of years, various people have been asking me about the possibility of taking the precepts. And I could see that some of you are coming to the point where it's a natural thing to do and a good thing to do. But it's also something we have to find out what it means. So last year I said, whoa, wasn't it last year?

[02:28]

Last year I said, yeah, let's have one weekend which will be to take the precepts or study the precepts. And I didn't really actually know how to go about it. But I also didn't want to know how to go about it. Because I want to find out sort of what happens or what you want. Now, I've performed quite a lot of lay ordinations. Or lay initiations. I have no idea how many, but hundreds and hundreds.

[03:29]

And how those arose Was Suzuki Roshi came to America? No. Why did... I remember how my first, my lay initiation, lay ordination happened. I think Suzuki Roshi started practicing with a few people in, well, he arrived in 59. And some people were practicing in, started practicing maybe in 60, maybe in 59.

[04:38]

And I came in 61. Moving to California from New York. And I started practicing with these guys. And some people were taking the precepts. And I believe it was the first time anybody had done it with Sukhiyoshi. I don't remember whether Sukhiroshi suggested or other people, or I said I'd do it too, because I decided, well, I'm in the midst of this stuff, I might as well do it, I suppose. So I said, okay. And you were supposed to be practicing for a year before you did it, I guess.

[05:48]

That's right, or something like that. And I found out they delayed the ceremony so that a friend of mine, Graham Petsche, and I could both be in the ceremony. So I took the precepts when I first, you know, just after I'd been practicing a year. I'm telling you this just because the history of how these things happen personally is relevant. So I did the ceremony. And it was all in Japanese. I don't know what happened.

[06:49]

It felt good, you know. And I had this little purple thing to wear. I still have it around somewhere. Like this, but it was purple. And I got a Buddhist name. And I got a Buddhist name. Which is Zen Tatsu Myo Yu. Zen Tatsu Myo Yu. Zen Tatsu. A friend of mine calls me Hatsi Tatsi. His friend calls me Hatsi Tatsi. I talk to him and he says, Are you Hatsi Tatsi? How are you, Hatsi Tatsi? And I don't actually forget, I mean, it wasn't very important to me even what my name meant.

[07:51]

And it's been some year, it's been 15 years since I, there's one kanji I forget what it meant and I haven't known for 15 years. But zen is zen. Tatsu is to penetrate. And I think myo is subtle. But I've had two different myos because in different ceremonies the myo got changed, the meaning got changed. And the you part, I don't know what it means. Maybe it means you. Now the precepts are taught in Koan Zen. are as the last of the koans.

[09:08]

So they're considered the most advanced step. And they're also considered, of course, the entrance. Now, I'm going to try to discover with you this why this is so and what this means. But the main reason, main meaning of the precepts is the doing of it. If you're too involved with what it means exactly and should you, then you shouldn't do it. This is more an emotional decision, where you're thinking with your emotions and feeling, than a decision of, is this exactly rational and logical?

[10:19]

And a decision which you should trust your feelings about it primarily. I'm this little nice little apartment I'm staying in now and up in the Up in the olden stream above Schries, the home of Schries. Yeah, and you go up the street and then you go up streets that don't belong in Germany anymore because they're falling apart. You get straight up this hill and suddenly there's this quite nice house. This is a hard-working... East German couple from the 50s, I think, built themselves.

[11:34]

Now, I was telling you about this apartment, I forgot. Let's see, there's some reason. Well, anyway, maybe they'll come back to me. Okay. Sometimes I tell you to forget where you are, and sometimes I forget where I am. You're supposed to be giving a lecture here. Or at least introducing you to the precepts. No, good, now I remember.

[12:37]

Coming down the hill from this place, there's this long stretch of nature where you don't go through any houses, don't go past any houses. Which you go through this sort of tube of nature. And then you appear back with houses and stuff and hotels. And somehow this sort of nature tube strikes me as being quite a lot like the precepts. You know, when I took the precepts first, as I just said, they were just in Japanese. And all the ceremonies were in Japanese, marriage ceremonies and so forth. I was initially married completely in Japanese.

[13:40]

I had no idea what happened, but I felt married afterwards. So that was the first stage. The second stage is we translated these things into some sort of Japanese English for a while. And when I came back from living and practicing in Japan and In 1971 I retranslated everything into a little clearer English. So the second stage was we did versions of Japanese Zen Buddhist ceremonies in relatively clear English.

[14:55]

Now, the way in which those precepts were taken, which is usually I did not give I don't really remember, actually, exactly, but I don't think I gave the precepts until a person had been practicing with me for five years, maybe three years. I didn't give the priest's monk's ordination until people had been practicing with me for five or seven years, something like that. And as I said, I ordained many hundreds of lay people and at least 90 priest ordinations.

[16:02]

Okay. So you can see that if you have to practice together for nine, for seven years to be a priest and three to five years at least to be a lay ordination, then this creates a certain kind of practice situation. So in effect, we were taking the precepts which have come out of Japanese Buddhism and Chinese Buddhism and translating them into English. And then those precepts, because they were really just English versions of what was done in Japan,

[17:07]

actually were the skeleton, shall we say, perhaps, which shaped a certain kind of practice community. Okay. Now, I don't, my feeling here in Europe, because this is the third stage of my practicing with people in relationship to the precepts. This is the third stage of my practicing with people in terms of the precepts. And this time I want the community that's developing here to shape how the, to form how the precepts are given.

[18:35]

So you see, I don't want to know quite what I'm doing because I want to hear from you what we should do. So I should try to make clear to you what the precepts are. Now, you could say that if you have a seed Now that seed is very tiny, but it's highly articulated. Or rather, it seems to have very little articulation, but something's there. And what you can't see is that there's an invisible tree hovering around that seed.

[19:48]

And if you put water and dirt and so forth around that seed, that that invisible tree will draw the seed into it. dann wird dieser unsichtbare Baum diesen Samen da hineinziehen. And the tree will take form. Und der Baum wird Form annehmen. So taking the precepts is a lot like that. They're seeds. Und wenn man die Gelöbnisse ablegt, das ist ziemlich ähnlich. Sie sind wie Samen. And if you know how to nourish those seeds, und wenn ihr wisst, wie man diese Samen nährt, An invisible tree of the Dharma and the Buddha and the Sangha will draw that seed into the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.

[20:52]

So there's some things we have to examine in this seminar this weekend, this ceremony, ceremony, I don't know what it is. We have to examine what is Buddha, and what is Dharma, and what is Sangha. And because some of us at least will be taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha on Sunday afternoon. And I think we have to talk about what I'm distinguishing between a lay initiation and lay ordination. And we have to talk about what is clergy ordination. I'm using clergy rather loosely to also mean possibly lay clergy.

[22:15]

Okay, and so I put underneath that an adept priest, a monk, a teacher. Now, what I think we're going to do is we'll have a lay ordination ceremony for a few people. At least that's my feeling at present. And we'll have a lay initiation ceremony for a larger number of people. And we'll have a and then we'll have some observers Now, precepts are really about how you exist in the world.

[23:28]

No, I don't know. Several people have brought up to me, quite a number of you and quite a number of the people I've been practicing the longest, because you've had problems with the word precept. Mm-hmm. And some of you aren't here because your spouses have problems with the words precepts. And your spouses think, who are you marrying? What are you marrying? They see Zen practice as a rival. Or a cult.

[24:55]

So some people are saying, wait another year before I can think about this. Now the word precept is just a word. So I could say it's just a word, so what's the problem? Because most of you who are worried about the word don't know what precepts are in Buddhism anyway. But you have a feeling something's coming down and you want to duck. Do you say that? Yeah. So if the words are bothering you, and there's no reason they shouldn't, because after all, this is happening in words, then we should look at the words.

[26:10]

At least I can only look at them in English, really. And you can look at them in German. Now the word initiation means to enter. And the root of it even has a I think it's the root of it. It has ion in it, like the Greek word ion. Which means, in chemistry at least, a net electric charge. When an atom or a... group of atoms or molecule has a net electric charge.

[27:19]

And the word net means when everything unnecessary has been taken out. So that might be a good definition of an initiation. When everything unnecessary has been taken out and you've got a good electric charge, energy charge. Wenn alles, was nicht notwendig ist, weggelegt oder abgelegt wurde und man eine gute elektrische Ladung hatte. And it also means the root is to go or to set in motion or to enter. Und die Wurzel bedeutet auch zu gehen oder in Bewegung setzen oder zu betreten. And it's also the same root is used for meaning a state of being, like in the word cohesion.

[28:23]

I-O-N is the end. The cohesion is a state of being of togetherness. Now, ordination... The root of ordination is harmony, is the same root for harmony and arm. And it means something that fits together. It's the same root of aristocracy. Originally, the word aristocracy in Greece meant, Greek culture meant, the people to be governed by the people who best fit together. Who have the most harmony. No, it doesn't. That's not what it always means nowadays.

[29:25]

But here you, and it's also the root of, the root in Greek I think it is, Latin maybe, means the threads on a loom. So it also has the root of arithmetic and read. Und diese Wurzel ist eben auch enthalten in lesen oder arithmetik. And I think also for rat of Bundesrat, isn't it? Rat skeller or something. Und es ist auch die gleiche Wortwurzel wie in rat, also Bundesrat oder Ratskeller. When things fit together. Wenn also Dinge zusammenpassen. So when you are ordained, you're really entering an order.

[30:42]

You're entering a way in which things are ordered. So I think that's different than initiation. Now precept means to to take hold of in advance or beforehand. Like the sept part is the same as perceive, conceive. It's the same to grasp, to take hold of things. So precept is an important word in Buddhism because it means something you can take hold of. Now principles is good too. I like it, but it doesn't have the sense of something you can take hold of. Now I would say that Buddhism you could divide Buddhism up in this way.

[31:58]

Is that there are basic truths of Buddhism and most exemplified by the Four Noble Truths. And then there's the path, most exemplified by the Eightfold Path. And then these truths and the path are articulated and realized through practices, durch Übungen, Precepts and blessings, die Gelöbnisse und Segnungen.

[33:01]

These practices, precepts and blessings rather work together. Und diese drei, die arbeiten ziemlich zusammen. You can't, you know, the four noble truths you recognize, you can't kind of get hold of them. Diese vier Eten Wahrheiten, die erkennt man, die kann man nicht irgendwie ergreifen. And the eightfold path you can practice, but again, it's not something you can take hold of in a sort of daily sense. So precepts have been developed as a way to give people and to find in yourself something you can guide yourself with or take hold of. Now, I wanted to show you how precepts as an act of intention are central to all of Buddhist practice. In fact, they're the seed of Buddhist practice.

[34:20]

Now, I have a lecture here by Suzuki Roshi that was published a while ago in the Wind Bell. He lectured or spoke quite often on the precepts. But we happen to have this running around the house. So we xeroxed it. So you can each have a copy. And I don't know if it's going to be very helpful. He talks about how precepts are like being... being like a stone. Not stoned, being like a stone. But it gives you a flavor of Suzuki Roshi's way of thinking.

[35:22]

And it gives you a sense of the wide way precepts are viewed in Buddhism. Basically to practice zazen is to manifest all the precepts. Taking the precepts is very important and potentially very powerful. They can protect you and your society. And they can be the seed of your entire development. So I think we ought to take... Let's see what time it is here.

[36:49]

It's getting late, isn't it? A little bit late. Not for a sashimi, but, you know. So I'd like us to have about ten minutes to have a drink or something you want or use the toilet or say hello to each other. And then we'll just have a brief time together and... and figure out the schedule for tomorrow and Sunday. And I have an example of the lineage papers, my lineage paper. And this is the Buddha. And these are a whole bunch of guys. This is more people in the Rinzai and Soto lineages. The six patriarchs and Dogen and so forth.

[37:55]

And down here is Suzuki Roshi. And he's number 89 and number 90 is me right there. Then that's me or you. If you receive one of these, then your name goes right here. Now... Only do this for the people receiving lay ordination and not for those who receive lay initiation, I think. Now, I have a couple of practical things. One is we have to have a schedule for tomorrow. How many of you are staying in this immediate neighborhood?

[38:59]

Okay. Well, I would like us to start at the seminar at nine o'clock. Is that okay? Usually we start at 10, but in this seminar, which I think is really a practice seminar, a little different than the public seminars, it would be nice to start earlier, but I think 9 is about as early as people can practically do. But for those of you who are living right in the immediate neighborhood, maybe you could have a period of zazen in the morning.

[40:02]

And I would suggest, let's see, if it's 6.45, if it's 7, that gives you approximately an hour and to 7.45 gives you an hour and 15 minutes before the seminar starts. Is that enough time? Or would it be better to start at 6.45 and have an hour and a half then? Does anybody have any preference? Because then you can't have breakfast after Zazen. Unless you're a very fast eater. And you have somebody sitting there.

[41:04]

As you finish Zazen, they come up with a hot pot. I volunteer to do it. So anybody have any preference? 645 or 7? 7. 7? Seven o'clock. Is that all right with you guys who are living near here? Then we'll go to, I don't think we'll meet in the evening. Okay. Now, and the ceremony on Sunday afternoon, I think probably two o'clock maybe. Because we have two, that's somebody down, went downstairs and can't get in probably. I don't think there's a bother up here. You know how to do it? Because we have to do two ceremonies.

[42:22]

First, if we do this, I mean, if all goes as I assume, we'll do the lay initiation ceremony at 2 o'clock. And the lay ordination ceremony at 3 o'clock, or something like that. And one of the things that came up, which I suggested last year, is that those of you who want to take the precepts should make one of these. And those of you who've made a raksu, I will, if you want, give lay ordination to. Not our car. Thanks. And it turns out that a few people have been able to make it.

[43:53]

But it's also pretty difficult to make and some people had a hard time making it. And some people have a resistance to sewing. Anyway, the tradition of Buddha's robe is that it's pieces of cloth, scraps of cloth which are sewn together. And now it's become a practice in which you say a little concentration exercise on each stitch. It's just something you do as a kind of life as I practice.

[44:57]

But it seems that making something like this really is easiest, obviously, in a group of people who live together. Because you can teach each other how to do it and help each other do it. How many pieces of cloth are involved? You know? Quite a lot. And what I will do for the people being ordained, then I write their Buddhist name on the back and sometimes something else. I also ask anybody who wants to formally be a student of mine to plant a tree.

[46:11]

Someone told me they'd planted thousands, but they still have to plant one more. Good morning. Well, I called up Mick Jagger last night. And I asked him, what is your precept? He said, well, Dick, you can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you get what you need. I thought that was pretty good for one precept.

[47:15]

A little convenient, but, you know. So then I called up Paul McCartney. I asked him, he said, I believe in yesterday. So I'd like to know what you believe. So I'd like to... Beate, what's your... Can you give us one precept that you have? At least one. You can give us ten or fifteen, but one is enough. Men and women should be treated equally. Okay, that would be a new Buddhist precept. I think it's assumed, but we haven't spelled it out. We probably should. Eric? Eric?

[48:16]

I find it difficult to have principles, or to formulate principles. So I thought maybe a good thing would be to be calm and to stay with the breath, and experience any situation. Oh yeah, please, I'm sorry. Anyone else? One should be true. One should be true.

[49:32]

What do you mean by true? Yes, whatever. All right. Okay, that's good. I thought about something that I tried to say. and to stay away from them. But I basically came back to some of them. One very important thing is not to talk about each other and to not fight. To not kill is what I thought about yesterday. And another one I thought is very important is to study myself.

[50:37]

And one woman said, and to not to misuse my senses. It goes into that direction, to take care of the senses and not misuse them. You want to say that in German? . to come back to them and to experience the basic life in practice, to not hurt each other, not to lie to each other, not to die, is certainly also the most difficult practice. The senses to use my soul in a different way.

[51:53]

And what is important for me is that it is not so easy to study, to study myself and to see how I work, how I think, how I feel. And for me, one of the practice principles in the way of practicing together in the book, like what we do in Christown, is to be responsible. And that really takes my, when Alex says to Stephen, in my reading, I'm waiting. It's one of the... the principle of presence. I try to stay always with him. It helps to be clear. .

[52:55]

I think it takes a certain amount of courage to say something like to be responsible. Because it's so obvious. And we have talked till that since we were children. You know, I think it was the poet Bojui who went to see a famous Zen master and couldn't find him. He was not in this temple. Bojui. Wandering around the temple, he found him sitting in a tree.

[54:15]

Doing zazen. There's these funny drawings of him sitting in this branch, which he could never sit on, and birds are around him. And so Pojari finds and looks up at this old man and says, I came to ask you the great meaning of Buddhism. What is the truth? How should we live? And this Zen Master said, avoid evil and do good. This famous poet said, every three-year-old knows that.

[55:18]

And this guy sitting up in the tree says, but an old man finds it hard to practice. I don't recommend that you all sit up in trees. You can remember hiking in the mountains. in the 60s with some friends. And we got in a conversation like this, and I said something about it was important to be sincere. And they laughed at me. I was sincere. Anyway, so something else? Yeah? Trust, including, it's more complex, cloud, so to say, including something also notions of faith and... I found more...

[56:28]

I was thinking about it more sort of positive things like I also came back to equality also. And then living together, that's more concern to . But living together, I should also have said responsibility and non-interference. That sort of concludes our lesson. OK. Deutsch? It's easier to be schmaltzy in English. So, vertrauen war für mich, also das ist wirklich das Schwierige im Griff. Vertrauen und das ist ein bisschen belastet, also da geht auch Glauben auch rein und also

[57:39]

I came back to the same mood and did not intervene, so to speak, in the area of the other, in the broadest sense. Responsibility was also given to me. And I wanted to get away, I don't know. That was the only thing I could do. Okay. Do you use schmaltzy in German like it's used in Yiddish, the same way? Maybe this could be the schmaltzy seminar. I saw this Jung film Matter of the Heart I was very struck with one sentence what he said at the end of the film and that sentence has always stayed with me like the world would be a better place if everybody managed to withdraw his or her shadow from the navel

[58:58]

And I feel that could be, I would like it to be a precept. Also dieser Jung-Film, Matter of the Heart, der hat mich sehr berührt. Vor allen Dingen einer der Sätze, die Jung am Ende sagt, dass die Welt ein wirklich besserer Platz wäre, wenn es jedem von uns gelingen würde, seinen Schatten von dem Nachbarn zurückzunehmen, auf den er ihn projiziert hat. Und das wäre für mich... So I'm precept. I think about, too, that you leave each other his own space and not try to let everybody make his own experience. Let's try to be, so we don't repeat ourselves too much, let's try not to be too discursive about these things. Let's just have the feeling of it, not so much how we think about it.

[60:16]

So, yeah. Yes, that's what I want to say. Basically, it's a good feeling, how I call it. And you talked about it last session. And I think in this feeling, all these elements, which were discussed here, are in . One interesting thing in my mind is that nothing is fixed, and principles tend to fix things. And if there are kind of principles, they have to be very, very soft and liquid. Liquid precepts, I like that. And another thing, but also be careful with people, with things, with situations.

[61:38]

Just watch. Well, the first thing that came to my mind was that principles tend to hold something in place. And if there are principles, they have to be open and not fixed. Und das zweite war, dass man sorgfältig umgehen sollte mit Menschen, mit Dingen. I'm very attracted to serenity in Buddhism, and I think that is congruent with every manifestation of life and respectful life. Because I feel don't get attached to any kind of thing too much.

[63:11]

Yeah. Man sollte nicht zu ernst nehmen und auch sich nicht zu fest an irgendetwas, was er noch immer ist, sei testklammer. How would you translate it? It's important for me that since these precepts can only be meant as an ideal to also practice forgiveness with oneself and others when you can't actually do them.

[64:13]

Yeah. Yeah. Can you speak English? my imagination to understand with love and my heart and not with my intellect. And similar to know that this is never reachable for me, but I always try to reach it. And I want to help others to go the same way.

[65:19]

If you take a vow that's limited, I don't like the phrase, save all sentient beings, but let's just take that for now. It doesn't make sense to say, I vow to save seven sentient beings. If you can save seven, you can probably save eight. But then eight doesn't save. You have to have an immeasurable feeling. Which means these precepts and vows are impossible. But their power is in their impossibility. Yes. I was thinking about Cohen.

[66:29]

He said, I'm always close to that. Close to this. So I think it would be good to live as close to this as we can. I was thinking about the life precedes Finally, I had a bad feeling about it. I said, why? I felt all those precepts are wonderful to practice, but in a way, I would begin very soon to self manipulate myself

[67:42]

to try to be the, always to be the good boy. I couldn't be, always restrict myself, wouldn't be spontaneous. So in the end, I would judge myself. Judge. Judge, yes. So in the end, I came to the precept, do as you like, but looking for yourself while you're doing that. This is the kind of first-order precept, and then the second-order precept. And what I say, when I can do as I like, and also respect myself, this should be first-order precept. I think that's very close to this. Okay. Deutsche. Last night I read about all the precepts and I found a whole series of precepts that are similar to the ones that have already been mentioned.

[69:05]

And at some point I had a bad feeling about it. And when I came to Germany, it was clear to me that I would start to manipulate myself very soon. Even to write or to write on the board, if I couldn't keep the precepts, or if I couldn't keep them in general, if I could only keep them, I would simply be deprived of them. And that's why I came to the conclusion that if I were to do the precepts as I wanted, But in doing so, to look at myself. And that is a kind of progress, full progress. Because the content, of course, that I can also say, I deliberately set restrictions on this and that nature and practice it.

[70:08]

I think that's very similar, that for me it's very similar to trying to say as close as possible to that. I think I try to be aware and see what happens. Yeah. When I look into my past and I always see that I don't know. I do something wrongly. So that's the only principle I know of that always accompanies me. that often you didn't know, what is the principle that accompanies it?

[71:20]

The principle that accompanies it is that he doesn't know or he doesn't do things right. In other words, what principle accompanies you is the awareness that in each situation it's not clear whether you're doing something that's right or wrong, good or bad? My opinions are not my feelings. My principles always change inside me. For me it was always interesting to sit down with you and see how it all came together, how different groups came together, like the Lippenbühel and friendliness, so all these things that have already been said, and now it's actually all about being careful, that it's really the mountain.

[72:31]

And that I actually experience that as something that is good for me on the one hand, if I experience life as a priority, but on the other hand also from my point of view. So I see it, I experience it as a relief, it's really a carelessness, it opens up to me. And that's just the way it is. All the things that have already been mentioned, they have also appeared. And the other thing that I just wanted to add, which I also found very beautiful, when I read the Martin, there was also a kind of precept, namely that the contact with the no is not so meant. Yes, that's what I mean. So, consciously, again and again, whether it's your own personal life, in quotation marks, is no longer so shaped by suffering, so not in contact with the suffering of others, but consciously also there, simply to seek this contact. When I deal with the matter of the precepts, everything sort of comes back to mindfulness.

[73:51]

Also what touched me when I read Thich Nhat Hanh, something he wrote about the precepts, one precept I found very... Meaningful for me is not to avoid contact with the suffering of others, even if your own life has become relatively free from suffering. Yes, and for me this is such an inspiration, this is a source of mindfulness, that I experience this as something that is in me, that is in me, and I want to remain as something that is in the world. Christian? The main thing I thought about was not to harm or hurt other people. But at the same time, it was very clear that it's very difficult. Okay, what I'd like to do is, during the day, if some of you feel prompted to express something that you feel is a principle or a preset we should think about, or you feel the need, want to say it, please do.

[75:23]

Because I want to, and I may occasionally call on, ask one of you to say something. Because I think this process of taking the precepts or observing the precepts is a process that goes on indefinitely all your life. It's a way of interacting with yourself. It's not something you take them and then it's that way until you die.

[76:26]

And this sense of taking the precepts, I mean, it's quite a contrast to the idea of commandments. Because the sense in Buddhism is you take them and then you learn how to hold them and sustain them. You receive them and then you learn to hold them and then you learn to sustain them. It's a three-part process. And they're usually given to you. It's like a gift that you receive.

[77:32]

And as in the sense that they're given, emphasizes how they act as if they're kind of a bond of love or trust. In which you agree with yourself. And you also agree with others. It's a lot like getting married. And we're going to have a third ceremony Sunday. They're going to get married Sunday. I will perform a ceremony. I think everybody can come, right? And believe it or not, Buddhism doesn't have really many ceremonies.

[78:38]

It's got lots of blessing-type ceremonies, but straight-out ceremonies, they're almost all versions of the ordination ceremony. So we, in a sense, ordain them to each other. But what's funny when you get married, you know, You can live with somebody for several years and be married for a year or two. And ten years later, if someone says, I was married once, but you don't even mention probably the person you lived with. If you get married, you tend to years later say, oh, I was married once, but you don't refer back to the time you lived with somebody for two or three years.

[79:49]

So a little ceremony that takes 20 minutes or so does something to you the rest of your life. So, taking the... And that's sometimes good, sometimes not so good. But in any case, when you take the precepts, you're in a sense marrying yourself. And you're acknowledging that with your friends. And the... Now, again, I'm playing with these... pull something out using English words.

[81:09]

You're going to have to think about this in your own language. But we do have to do this taking of precepts in English. English or German or something, we can't take it in Japanese or Chinese. I mean, we can at the level of feeling, but at the level of how to practice with it, it's important to come to some definitions within yourself. It's important to come to some definitions within yourself. Now, I call this the tortoise mirror precepts. And in the monasteries in China and Japan, they sometimes read the admonitions or recommendations of practice to people.

[82:22]

Like the beginning of a practice period, a training period, a practice period, these would be read. And they've taken different forms over the centuries. But they're called, the word in Japanese is kikan. Which means tortoise mirror. And tortoise mirror is a sense that tortoise is a creature that may live forever. Anyway, they live hundreds and hundreds of years maybe. I think they found them nearly 900 years old. And it's possible they only die by accident. In any case, the sense of this tortoise mirror is to hold a mirror up to yourself and look into your past and your future.

[83:36]

A mirror of longevity. How have you lived and how do you want to live? You've all lived long enough to actually, you wouldn't be here if you weren't following some principles or precepts. So the difference between a principle and a precept, the content is the same. Like if you said, the principles of this school are, the principles of this business are, That we're honest, that we treat the students or the customers well or something.

[84:38]

But a precept would be, yes, the content's the same, but you decide to take this as a way to live, not just, you know, understand what I mean? And that's a kind of big step and a difficult step. A little scary. You know, it's one thing to say, this is the way I live. And it's another way to say, I understand this well enough to also know this is the way I'm going to live. So that's what I'm asking us to explore together. Because this sense of precepts has to arise out of us, first of all. And the more you've developed a sense of your own precepts, you can respond to, answer, talk with the Buddhist precepts.

[85:48]

And so you can say, ah, I recognize that. Or, yes, if I take it that far, that takes me farther than I intended to go. Or, you know, I don't agree with this so much. That kind of discussion is important with yourself and with the precepts. Now, I want to take a break a moment, but I want to say one more thing. Well, again, go back a moment to the tortoise mirror precepts of the Dharma ancestors.

[86:50]

You have to translate. Of the Dharma ancestors, the sense here is that these precepts have been the articulation of the mind and way of being that has led to enlightenment in our Dharma ancestors. Well, I'm not very clear. So these precepts are the state of mind and being that our Dharma ancestors have discovered led to enlightenment. Maybe English is enough. These precepts I don't know what's wrong with me today. She's taking these precepts and suddenly... You know, in the middle of doing the ceremony sometimes...

[88:00]

You realize what you're doing. And you can't remember the simplest things. Your mind goes blank. I agree with all these things, but can I really agree with these things? And as you can see in the Dharma lineage chart there, The line connecting the names is red. And that represents blood. And when you do this ceremony most fully, at not this stage, you actually draw the blood of the teacher and the apprentice and you draw the line. Some of these, she just decided not to do it.

[89:05]

So, now you have an entry. I was just worrying about AIDS. No, I did it with this son who had AIDS. And so we were very careful. He kept saying, be careful now, Roshi. But you don't worry. You don't draw the whole line with blood. You only mix blood with part of the ink. Anyway, so that means that that's called the preceptual vein. So it's considered that the precepts are actually The blood lineage.

[90:25]

Now. Okay, I think that's enough for now. Yes. Have you thought of one? I mean, I didn't find one. Yeah. Well, I think for the purpose, since all of you know English pretty well, for the purpose of this weekend, we can use the English word precepts and so forth. But I don't, I can't help, but if you guys can figure something out, good. Maybe German has to start absorbing a lot of words like English does. I mean, one of the things that English is doing is just taking words from everywhere and using them.

[91:31]

It's not like French. It's just, we don't want any of those bad English words. American English especially is just somehow like becoming a melting pot language. Okay. The Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. The Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. are called the three treasures. It's one of the things they're called. And in that sense it means the physical objects of the world are treasures. Anyway, we'll talk about that kind of thing afterwards.

[92:12]

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