Of course to practice Buddhism it's not necessary to get up early. And it's not necessary to do zazen. Probably there wouldn't be Buddhism without zazen or without meditation. But person by person zazen has... relevance to practice, particularly to that person. In other words, if you think your discovery of Buddhism is a kind of wisdom or teaching which fits in with some of the things you feel and think, But then you can try to live, actualize those teachings in the best way you can.

[01:02]

But one of the best ways to do it the shortcut the sometimes a bit painful and discomforting shortcut is meditation and zazen practice. Now, again, if I try to make it simple in a somewhat unusual sense, I'm not trying to make it simple because we're simple.

[02:31]

Because we're complex and the teaching of Buddhism is complex. Not necessarily complicated, but complex. But to... focus our intention or to realize an intention, it often helps to see it, a complex situation, in simple terms. So here's my simple explanation, commentary. A sleeping mind arises from the posture of lying down. Der schlafende Geist steigt aus der Haltung des sich niederlegens auf.

[03:46]

It's very hard to sleep standing up. Es ist sehr schwierig im Stehen zu schlafen. I say that jokingly, unless you're a horse or you're driving. Ich sage das immer so scherzhaft, außer du bist ein Pferd oder du fährst Auto. Mostly to sleep we want to lie down. And when you fall asleep, you tend to fall down. Im Großen und Ganzen wollen wir uns hinlegen, wenn wir schlafen. Und wenn du einschläfst, dann neigst du dazu, auch hinzufallen. And mostly, consciousness is related to standing up. Und im Großen und Ganzen ist das Bewusstsein bezogen auf oder steht in Beziehung mit dem Stehen. Many of you know how amused I am by the fact that in Germany, when you wake up in the morning, you all stand up. In America we just get up, but in Germany you stand up. Okay, so there's clear relationship between posture and mind.

[05:09]

Now that relationship is extremely subtle. But, I mean, nuances of posture make a difference in nuances of mind. But in the simple sense, there's obviously a clear relationship between the posture of reclining and the posture of standing. But some genius or by happenstance, I don't know. By chance. Thanks. You ask me if it's right? How do I know? I'm not as smart as all you folks. So, some genius or by happenstance, someone discovered that this posture with an upright back and a kind of relaxation that's similar to going to sleep but with an upright posture produces, makes very likely a mode or state of mind

[06:49]

That is not in any substantial way a mind we're born with. It's a mind we generate by our intention and our actions. But strangely enough, it seems to be a mind through which we discover it feels like we discover seems like we discover something close to how we actually exist. It's a kind of early microscope. It takes a microscope and lenses and all that stuff to look at how we're composed of cells and stuff. Man braucht ein Mikroskop und eine Linse und dieses ganze Zeug, um sehen zu können, wie wir aus Zellen zusammengesetzt sind.

[08:12]

Someone discovered that developed still sitting allows you to observe the mind and body And act within mind and body or as mind and body. And within the situations and the circumference in which you live. The circumference, of course in English, is what surrounds you. You know, this is quite marvelous, magical, wonderful. Okay, now I would like to have from you simple, basic questions. Like, why do we get up so early?

[09:28]

Why do we sit zazen? Someone asked me the other day, a very nice person, a botanist, head of the botany department in Karlsruhe, And his wife. Yeah, and they happened to be, they were having a double birthday, October 1st and the 2nd. So we had a little birthday party at a restaurant. And by chance I had this little booklet of the ordination a couple of weeks ago. Well, they know me as their neighbor. And a guy, elderly guy with a seven-year-old kid.

[10:41]

And nice enough, ordinary person, you know. And then they open this book and they see me in golden robes. They're carrying a teaching staff and, you know, people. And they said, who, what, who, who's that? And they showed it to the little kid, and he, well, I guess that's Richard. They showed it to their little kid, and he said, well, I think that could be Richard. So the wife said immediately to me, to practice Zen do you have to wear robes? And said, why do you wear robes? This was a much harder question to answer than why we get up early. I don't know, I got tricked into it.

[11:59]

No, that's not true, I wasn't tricked into it. But, you know, when I thought about it, I said, well, why do I wear clothes at all? You can ask yourself the question, why do you wear clothes? Other than you might get arrested if you don't. It's warm, etc., but you're not choosing clothes just because they're warm. There's a lot of reasons that go into choosing clothes. I'm always amused to see scrolls from, you know, 1500, 1700, 1900s. And, you know, there's often in these scrolls, there's a monk or monks and lay people. And in every century, the lay people look different. And in every century, the monk looks the same. It simplifies the wardrobe choices.

[13:22]

At least over centuries. You have to live forever. I'm not saying this is an answer to this question. One question that is, why do we... wear this or do lay ordination and so forth. Yeah. Mahayana Buddhism is a, I mean, overall a lay practice. I mean, it defines itself as a practice for lay people. But over the centuries, it's been carried by monastics. Yeah. Now monastic means something different than in Christianity, but the kind of training or practice life we call monasticism.

[14:42]

And you're participating in some kind of experiment. You're all, most of you are lay persons. And I'm a sort of lay person. I don't know. A monk disguised as a layperson. But maybe I'm a layperson disguised as a monk. We don't know exactly. In any case, there's a mix here of what the center is in Crestone in Colorado. is my attempt and my experiment to bring, to explore the relationship between monastic practice and lay practice. And it's not just my detached kind of sociological experiment.

[16:00]

It's also my need. It's what I need to do if I'm going to practice with people. I'm just sort of talking with you guys, with guys and gals. Maybe it's the same word, you know. And, you know, We have to explore, I mean we need to explore, these questions.

[17:13]

I don't know if we come up with answers, because in the end we do something. I don't know if it's based on answers, but it's based on exploration. And I've committed myself to trying to develop a practice that works for laypeople. And I committed myself to also be a layperson. Yeah, and sometimes I failed. I'm not going to explain my failures. But now... I also want to speak about the history of how we got here.

[18:28]

Again, because there's lots of contingencies that makes an event like this happen. Nochmal, eben weil es viele Kontingenzen gibt, die dafür sorgen, dass ein Ereignis wie dieses entsteht. And I can't speak to why each of you are here. Und ich kann nicht dazu sprechen, warum jeder einzelne von euch hier ist. And there's no need for you to try to understand it yourself. Und ihr müsst es auch selber nicht unbedingt verstehen. You're here and for some reason or other you ended up here. Ihr seid hier und aus irgendeinem Grund seid ihr hier angekommen. Through friends or interests or... historical happenstance, or some kind of return of the repressed, a phrase I discovered the other day.

[19:39]

I mean, I've known the phrase, but in how I'm using it, discovered the other day. In other words, Freud had this term, the return of the repressed. In other words, if you repress something in childhood, it doesn't stay repressed. It returns in neurotic behavior, it returns in I don't know, symbolic acts or twitches, you know, ticks, you know, things like that. Same in every language. I once knew a roshi had a tick. What?

[20:45]

I once knew a Roshi who had a tick. Japanese guy. It's kind of odd. I thought, when is he sitting still? Yeah. Sukershi always often spoke about our innermost request. And discovering our innermost request. But I think there's also, we repress our innermost requests. We often, the way we'd really like human beings to be, Or we hope that our father and mother is some kind of ideal father and mother.

[21:46]

Or we hope we find a teacher who is the ideal teacher or how we'd really like a human being to be. Or we hope we find a teacher who is the ideal teacher or how we'd really like a human being to be. And then most of us are disappointed. And then we learn to accept disappointment. And then we often accept our parents better accepting this disappointment. Or teachers let us down, etc. But somehow, ideally, we don't give up this ideal. And it can return in our practice.

[22:48]

So it's the return of repressed innermost requests. Things we've given up on. But sometimes if you sit, you find in yourself a taste of that kind of person you want someone to be. And you find even a kind of power a recognition that if you want an ideal person to exist you've got to be that person isn't that obvious did you just hear what I said

[23:48]

If you want such a person you have to be that person. How are you going to do that? I mean maybe it is an inner request. How are you going to find you've got habits of Decades, and you've got to live in a world that expects certain things of you. How are you going to do it? Yeah. So let me shift a bit to history. Yeah. Suzuki Roshi decided, I think fairly young, to maybe come to the United States.

[25:04]

His father was a Zen teacher. And when he was fairly young, he was sent by his father to his father's disciple to study. In this sense, his father was taking Buddhist practice seriously. Because it's better not to study with your own father. And the lineage of father-son temple is not so good in Japan. So at least he sent him to his own disciple. And Sukershi was quite sincere, earnest person. Ernest?

[26:13]

The two? Okay. English just has too many words. Too many synonyms. And he found Buddhism in... Japan kind of stale. Like stale bread? And he, of course, again, was a young man in the Second World War. And he didn't want to participate in the war.

[27:15]

But he felt that he should help his generation, so he became a kind of chaplain in Manchuria. A chaplain is a... minister or priest or something that serves in the army to help soldiers. And so he was motivated, like many others, do we have to live in a world with war? And after the war he marched in peace marches and things like that. He was also, he loved Japanese culture. Er liebte die japanische Kultur auch.

[28:27]

And he was also disappointed at how Japanese culture was understood in the West. In those days it wasn't made in China, it was made in Japan. And it meant lousy, cheap, etc. Damals hieß es nicht made in China, sondern es hieß immer made in Japan. Und das bedeutet so viel wie billig und abgedroschen. So he had the feeling that he wanted some kind of new soil, new grounds for Buddhism. But he had obligations in Japan, but as soon as he was able to and had a chance, he came to the United States. And the Soto school gave him some money to buy a western suit and tie. I've never seen him dressed this way. So he... When they met him at the airport to send him off, he didn't have any Western clothes.

[29:45]

He said, I'm not going to wear Western clothes, but I'm a monk. So when he came, he took over the leadership of this ethnic Japanese temple. Which was repopulated after the Second World War. Because most of the congregation was interned in camps during the war. And somehow they managed, I don't know how, to pay the taxes on this old synagogue and keep it so they kept the ownership of it and returned to it after the war.

[30:48]

And, oh dear, I have to tell you this anecdote. The family, Hagiwara family, I think it was. The Hagiwara family. Hagiwara. Hagiwara family. H-A-G-I-W-A-R-A. Hagiwara. Hagiwara. No, not Vara. Wara. You're much better at this than I am. I can't say it. W like water, not bossy. Anyway, it's the family that had the Japanese tea garden in... What's the park, the big park?

[31:52]

Golden Gate Park. Golden Gate Park, yeah. It's still a big... big tourist place to go so George Hagiwara's father well the US government was discovered that that's unbelievable discovered that signals were being sent to Japanese submarines off the coast of California Have I ever told this story before? No. Okay. What did you say? Off the coast of California, the submarines. And the American Navy kind of triangulated it, and the triangulation occurred in Golden Gate Park. Okay. And in Golden Gate Park there's a kind of traditional Buddhist stupa.

[33:03]

Which has, you know, rings at the top and little stuff. And it was a sending station for sending signals to Japanese submarines. And it was from the point of view of Japan, these were patriotic Japanese. But from the point of view of the Japanese community, it was treachery. So when they were caught, George Hagiwara's father and he were supposed to commit harakiri.

[34:04]

I don't remember exactly, but I believe George refused. And instead, his sister, on the steps of the tea garden stupa, the father and sister committed harakiri. These things actually happen. Anyway, it might have been just the sister, because the father might have... Anyway, this happened. So George, of course, was a young boy. He was shamed because he didn't commit harakiri. Anyway, they were part of this congregation that Tsukiroshi inherited. which was in significant ways ostracized by the Japanese community.

[35:42]

Ostracized? No, ostracized means you don't speak to them, you don't talk to them. You know, you can sit in a chair if you'd like. Okay. I used to have such a terrible time sitting. It would take me forever to get my legs up. I called it the half lily because it nearly killed me. Lilies are used in funerals in America. And my right foot stuck out in the back and my left foot was somewhere. And one time Sri Krishna came by and tapped me during Zazen and said, just sit at home. But he walked around every morning after we got sitting, and I would last until he walked around, which, if he was compassionate, was in about 10 minutes.

[36:48]

If he was a little less compassionate, it was 20 minutes. Because he knew that once he passed I would lift my legs up and sit like this the rest of the period. So anyway, he came to the States. And the first thing he tried to do is beg in the streets of San Francisco. I think he tried it for about six days and everybody thought he was just totally nuts, so he stopped.

[37:51]

So anyway, his idea of coming was somehow to... come as a representative of Japanese culture and a representative of Buddhism the way it's supposed to be. I really don't think he had much idea beyond that. Except that he had a kind of wide, compassionate nature and spirit. So what did he discover when he first got there? Well, he had this terrible political situation of the temple congregation and their relationship to the rest of the Japanese community.

[38:58]

But he found they just wanted a traditional Japanese priest to do funeral ceremonies and Ceremonies and primarily funeral ceremonies. They were old, they kept dying. And to be a friend and a confidant. But what did he discover? he discovered that most or a large percentage of the people, after a while, people came... Excuse me. He found that the ethnic Japanese had no interest in Zen practice.

[39:59]

But after he'd been there some months... Some Westerners came by and said, you know, can we meditate here? So he said, sure. And they tried to figure out a time and, you know. And what did he discover? that a very large percentage of the people who came were women. Yeah, and this doesn't happen in Japan. The women come to the temple, but they don't come to meditate. Okay. So, what's the next thing he discovered? It's often the most committed people were couples. This set the pattern for the Western Buddhism.

[41:13]

In fact, the people who came to practice were women and couples. Yeah, like my wife, Virginia, and myself. And I don't know about European... But in America, if you took the couples out of the American sanghas, there'd be almost no practice centers. Because they're usually the people who just were willing to stay and make it work. And the couples are usually by definition laypeople. And Sukir, she didn't like the kind of macho young men side to Japanese Buddhism. The Japanese Buddhist training.

[42:29]

You know, a la samurai. So he wanted practice to be for all ages, everybody, anybody. So this was not something he... That wasn't something he planned when he came to America. It's what America told him they wanted. So he really immediately embraced it. It's the way it should be. Yeah. I mean, a priest who came to help him later when we started Tassajara, the first Zen monastery in the West. He wanted it segregated, so there were only men there and in different valleys only women.

[43:29]

And Sukhirashi and I said, this is not new Buddhism, or I don't know, this is convinced. So we said, no, Tassara will be for men and women. What happens when you have men and women practicing together? Babies. Babies. Well, so babies become part of the Sangha. This is new. In 1893, Paul Karas, some of you may know him as a sort of philosopher.

[44:39]

Karas, and he, they sponsored a world convocation of religions in Chicago. I'll try to make this history part quick. I mean, it interests me a lot, but I'll still try to make it quick because it's not so that important. And they invited a famous, very strict, very physically beautiful, actually, Japanese Zen master named Soyen Shaku. Soyen Shaku. Shaku. That's good.

[45:45]

She knows almost everything, but not quite. And he was invited. And when he went back to Japan, they, Paul Karras, asked him to send somebody to America who knew about Buddhism. So when Soyen Shaku went back to Japan, he asked his young scholar, lay student, D.T. Suzuki, to come to the West. So D.T. Suzuki came to America. And I think he lived in Chicago first.

[46:48]

And he married a Westerner, I think, Beatrice Suzuki. And she seems to have been a big help in his writing English. I never made a study of this, but I've been told that after she died, his English wasn't as good as it was earlier. Okay, so D.T. Suzuki came to the West. Not only is all the books he wrote and everything, etc., had a huge influence in America, but he influenced the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, who influenced the whole history of contemporary Western English poetry.

[48:01]

And he influenced Ezra Pound D.T. Suzuki influenced Ezra Pound. And Ezra Pound's poetry is a flow with all kinds of Asian and Zen allusions. And Ezra Pound is the main background for so-called beat poetry. And Herr Dr. Edward Kunze. Most of you may know his books. He's the person attributed with developing or articulating Buddhist Sanskrit. And I knew Dr. Konsei quite well.

[49:13]

And Sukhiroshi, in fact, asked me to study with him. But he graduated from Cologne, I guess, Kirin. But I think it was also Heidelberg. I'm not sure. But he claimed to be of a generation of himself, Heidegger and some other person. Who in the condition of Germany searched for some kind of ultimate solution, ultimate truth. And for Konsei it was Majamaka Nagarjuna Emptiness Buddhism.

[50:18]

And for Konsei it was Nagarjuna, Madhyamaka and Nagarjuna Buddhism. Buddhism which emphasizes emptiness. So Konsei had an aptitude for languages and by the time he was 26 he knew 14. Sorry, what age was he? 24. 26. He knew 14 languages. And then he went to, he joined the Communist Party because he didn't like what was German government at that time. I've never seen this written, but what he told me personally, and some other people too, is that the German Communist Party had made a deal with Stalin to revolt against Hitler. They didn't like Hitler, etc.

[51:42]

They didn't like Nazis. And it's interesting, Heidegger went the other way to support Nazis. And this center was Graf von Dürkheim's meditation center. And he supported Nazis. He was a major diplomat and a friend of Goring or something like that. He gave pro-Nazi speeches and he ended up a diplomat in Japan and incarcerated during the war. He stayed in, I think, Japan during the war, I don't remember exactly. Okay, so anyway, Kunze chose the communist path.

[52:49]

And what he told me was they had four million guns hidden in basements all over Germany. I think a lot of them supplied by Russia. And that they were supposed to do something on a particular date, and then Stalin and Hitler made a deal. So Konsei went to England and got involved with socialist and Labour Party politics. And then, I don't know whenever this was, some years later, he basically had a nervous breakdown. And in the midst of the nervous breakdown, he read D.T.

[53:59]

Suzuki. And he decided to become a Buddhist scholar. It saved his life, supposedly. And we literally could not study Buddhism as we do without his translations of the Prajnaparamita Sutras. And then Konsei came to Berkeley and Suzuki Roshi had me study with him. And Konsei would regularly give lectures and seminars at the San Francisco Zen Center. Okay, so that's enough of that history. But you can see it's all entwined with... Yeah? Go ahead.

[55:00]

I don't want to interrupt you. No, it's all right. You know what always interested me? If you ever spoke with Suzuki Hoshi about the massacre of Nanjing. I never spoke to him about it. I never spoke to him about it. If I'd known about it then, I would have asked him about it. Anyway, the fact of my being here and our being here is actually our individual choices, but it's in a very particular historical context. A historical context which offers us the opportunities to make these choices. Yeah, so the next step are the beatniks, the hippies, LSD, San Francisco, but you don't want to hear about Ove.

[56:20]

But if you're curious, I can tell you something about it. But it definitely is the next step, and it comes out of Ezra Pound and Dr. Konsei, D.T. Suzuki. So today seems to be the background of new Buddhism. I mean, you're the foreground of new Buddhism. So let's have a break.

[56:39]

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