Thursday night, Thursday afternoon, Philip Kaplo Hiroshi visited the Zen Center in San Francisco. He was flying on his way to Indonesia, actually to Java, to visit, to look at the big monument called Borobudur, if you're familiar with that. And he had a six hour, I think, stopover in San Francisco. So he wanted to see the Zen Center. He'd never been to Zen Center before. And so it was set up for him to take a look at some of the businesses and look at Page Street Zen Center and have tea with the students.

[01:08]

Borobudur is a Buddhist monument that was built by, no one knows exactly who, but it was started around the 8th century in Java. Java was a kind of mixture of Hindu and Buddhist cultures at that time. And Borobudur is one of the wonders of the world in stone. But until recently it wasn't thought about very much. Because the people who went to Java The Europeans that went to Java were only interested in commerce, and they completely ignored any religious edifices. Even though the road passed by Borobudur, they didn't even see it.

[02:20]

Anyway, it's quite large. It's a really big monument, and it's built like a mandala. And it was built in stages, four different stages, over a period of about 500 years. And each stage was built by different people who had a little different idea about what it was supposed to be. So it's a little bit of a hodgepodge, but basically it's a great Buddhist mandala. And archaeologists and architects are still trying to figure out exactly what it's about. But more or less it's based on a tantric model of the universe, the Buddhist universe.

[03:27]

So, Kapilaroshi is going to, very curious about it, he wants to visit there. He's about 70 now, getting to be an old man. And when he came to Zen Center, he was very nice. I didn't know what to expect. I had met him one time in Daibosatsu, the opening of the Daibosatsu Monastery in New York, in the Catskills of New York. And he seemed kind of cold and aloof at that time. He walked up to me and he said, who are you? I told him who I was, he didn't seem to be very impressed. But this time he walked up to me and he said, oh, you're Mel Weitzman.

[04:36]

And that was very nice. And he expressed a desire to visit the Berkeley Zindo. Apparently, he was very disarming because he was very personal and intimate feeling. And he seemed to know a lot about things, but had never been to Zen Center before, which was a kind of disappointment. I could feel his disappointment at never having been invited to come to Zen Center over all this time. And he was surprised at what a big place the Page Street Zenda was. And I think he was impressed with the students. And so he sat down in the dining room and there was an informal discussion.

[05:40]

People asked him a lot of questions. And some of the things that he said, well, there was an informal discussion and then right after that was dinner. And I had the good fortune to be able to sit next to him at dinner. And so I can tell you some of the things that both in the discussion and what we talked about were. The feeling that I got from his answers was that he was, to the questions, was that he's not really interested in Soto Zen or Rinzai Zen. People asked him questions about his background as a Rinzai, teaching koans as his focus, and he said, actually, he said, I'm not really Rinzai. He said, mostly when I was in Japan, which is 14 years, he said, I think I stayed there too long, was in Soto training, Soto style training.

[06:51]

But his teachers, Yasutani Roshi mainly, was a Soto priest, and later he practiced Rinzai, and that's where he learned the Koan study. But he said, I'm interested in Buddhism. I'm not interested in perpetuating the sectarian side of Zen. And someone asked him about his disciple, what's her name? Tony Packer, and about her breaking away, you know, his main woman disciple. broke away from the group and started a Zen group. She wasn't interested. He said she wanted to break away from Buddhism.

[07:55]

Eliminate Buddhism from her Zen. Which he said was very disappointing to him. He said it's kind of like skimmed milk. but he appreciates it very much and what they're doing and he said it caused a big kind of schism in the group and a lot of people had a very difficult time with it with the problem but He feels that American Zen is what we should be thinking about. I guess that was a big blow to his conception of what he was doing when she did that.

[09:00]

And it really made him think about it a lot, about what's really going on. And he feels that now is the time to start thinking more about developing American-style practice. He feels that Japanese teachers will always be Japanese teachers, and no matter how many Japanese teachers you bring to America, they will always be Japanese-style teachers. will continue to be influenced in that way. And he would like to see more Zen centers to pay more attention to each other, people in various places to share their practice more.

[10:04]

and not be so exclusive with each other. And his generation of teachers in America, he said they all knew each other. They all knew each other. But he said they didn't really get along very well. And they had a lot of ego and a lot of exclusiveness. and which he took part in himself, but regrets. And he hopes that this next generation of teachers and leaders in the various groups of Zen Buddhism will be more open to each other and develop a kind of practice that's more inclusive and leaving the old distinctions behind.

[11:11]

So that sounded very encouraging to me. And after all of the various upheavals in American Zen, in the last year or so, couple of years. I think everyone feels that now we have to start doing something a little different. Jock Cho, Bill Kwong was, I was talking to him also. He's been staying at Zen Center for a week. And he said in the Chinese, cosmology that we're at the end of a 360-year cycle. And every 360 years a new cycle starts.

[12:16]

And last year was the last year of the previous cycle, and this year is the beginning of a new cycle. And he said, you know, I said, I don't know whether I would believe in that or not, you know. But it's interesting that last year all this, so much happened. So much happened on the downside. And now it's all, it's a new beginning with a new cycle. It is interesting. So, I asked Kapo Roshi if he ever comes to this area very often.

[13:27]

He says, almost never. In order to invite him out to Zen Center for a while, to get to know him a little better, we have to make some special arrangement, because he's very busy. But I think that we will, and we've said that we'd keep in touch so that we could do that in the near future. So I think that our practice here has been very simple ever since we started. And mainly we've been concentrating on Zazen and our daily life as Genjo Goan.

[14:29]

And our practice has been very steady and simple. And I think that people very much appreciate that. I get a feeling from lots of people that when there was a lot of excitement going on in Zen in the past 15 years, that our practice was not so noticeable to people. But now I get a lot of feeling that a lot of people very much appreciate the steadiness and simplicity of our practice. And it gives me a lot of encouragement and confidence in what we've been doing. I was talking, when I was at Tassajara, I was talking to Paul Disko, who was the, Paul Disko is the carpenter, Zen Center carpenter, who went to Japan for five years and learned Japanese carpentry and has been doing a lot of building.

[15:47]

And he's a shuso now at Tassajara, the head monk. We finally got him away from his tools. And, gave him that position. And he said something like, we're kind of like turning over the ground. And people that come later will be standing on our shoulders. They'll be the flowering of our practice, but for us our job is just to turn over the soil. And I've always had that feeling that for us it's too soon to make some spectacular

[16:50]

to think of some kind of spectacular flowering of Buddhism. And it takes a long time just to keep the seed in the ground, just to cultivate the ground and make sure that the sprout takes And I think that a lot of people who started practicing Zen in the last 20 years have wanted to see too much happen, wanted to see too much result of our practice. Have not been patient enough to just continue to have our uninteresting practice of cultivating the ground.

[18:00]

We're very impatient people in America. way. I always felt that he felt that you can't cultivate the ground too long. And that's why he gave us such a simple practice. As you may or may not know, the Soto Zen in Japan, the rituals are very elaborate and the chanting is very elaborate and complex. But he didn't give us any of that.

[19:08]

He gave us the most simple kind of practice where we could do just one thing well. And that was to just sit Zazen and have a very strong, steady activity. reminds me a little bit of pioneer, you know, any kind of pioneer. If you don't struggle through the beginning time in a very simple way, there's something wrong, something you're not far enough ahead out there.

[20:28]

There's this book about, written, I can't remember the name of the book or the person who wrote it, but it's about pioneer women in Kansas. And I've been, Liz has been reading it and I pick it up every once in a while and just read a few pages. But it's a very interesting document about the kind of life that the people who settled Kansas had in the 19th century, really not so long ago. And one of the accounts was how somebody wanted to make a birthday cake, no, a wedding cake for somebody else. And instead of putting butter on their bread, saved the butter that they would have put on their bread.

[21:31]

And then someone rode to town, which is 20 miles away, and traded the butter in for some sugar or something. And then rode back to put the sugar into the cake. And all the ingredients kind of were gathered in that way. And there were some parts that were missing. I think part of the cake was made with sour milk and things that weren't quite so hot. But everybody enjoyed the cake very much. And it was a great delight to everyone. And in order to survive, they had to live a very frugal, simple life.

[22:34]

But that kind of continual kind of dullness and simplicity of their practice enabled future generations to build on it. So I think in the same way, we're like that, building a kind of cornerstone. And we shouldn't really be too concerned with doing any more than that. Now, two things that we're concerned about. One is we're concerned about ourself.

[23:37]

And the other thing is we're concerned about Buddhism and practice. And we should be concerned with both. But I hope we're not just concerned with our own, just ourself. If we're only concerned with ourself, about what will happen to ourself, then I don't think that the practice will survive. So, I hope that we're all concerned about the future of our practice. Actually, the whole practice is right here, you know.

[24:44]

The flower is also in the root. The flower and the trunk and the root are all there in the tree. But we can just focus on the root. If we can just focus on the root, it will be enough. Anyway, it's very interesting for me that I think the next 10 years will help to shape, we'll see what, the things that we do will really help to shape sand in America and determine which way it will go.

[25:52]

So I think we have a lot to look forward to. Do you have anything you'd like to talk about? Any questions? I was reading the newsletter. It's my thing. in it the emphasis seemed to be that it's first necessary to work upon our practice without the are, just the practice, and trying to disassociate ourself from the center. And in a way I was thinking about that, and sort of the problems that the Zen Center has had has been sort of incestuous type of personality, conflicts, which I thought are human nature, will always be there.

[26:58]

And I was thinking that maybe the future of Zen Buddhism lies in, not exactly missionary work, but somehow taking the concepts to the American public where it's so apparent. These concepts seem so lost in politics and things. Depressed communities. And I think that that's really the future lives, personally. Well, that is an aspect. That's more like the flowering, in a sense. Do you know Isan at Zen Center? He's the director of the building. And he wants to start a soup kitchen in the Tenderloin. That's his big project.

[28:02]

And he comes from that background. I say that background. He used to be a female impersonator. And he worked at Finocchio's and various places. And he was pretty well known. And then I think something happened and he really degenerated a lot and then he came to Zen practice and regenerated. And he's been a monk for quite a long time. And he has a lot of sympathy for the type of person who ends up in a tenderloin. And he's always taking people under his wing, helping them out. So he wants to start a soup kitchen, and there's a lot of support for that. And that's one aspect of a way to express practice.

[29:13]

And then I was talking to Graham Petchy, last night. And he is one of Suzuki Roshi's first disciples. And when I came to Zen Center, he was the one ordained monk. That was back in 1964. And he always used to sit very strongly. But when we'd sit in Zendo, his presence was permeated to Zendo. I remember admiring his practice very much. But he went to Japan, he went to Eheiji, and then he stayed in Japan, actually, and started a language school, and didn't really come back to Zen Center.

[30:16]

And so I asked him why he never came back. I was always wondering about it. And he said, well, one thing he had to, he had to prove himself in the business world. And the other thing was that there was some possibility that he would have been Suzuki Roshi's main successor. But Suzuki Roshi made Dick Baker his main successor. And so Graham had to leave and couldn't really come into Zen Center. with, under Dick Baker's regime. But he said that he really, when all, when Dick Baker fell, he said he really admired him, what he'd done, more than ever before. Because he said he realized that what he'd done was taken Zen practice into government

[31:20]

I mean, he actually reached people in very high levels of government and culture, and had given them some real sense of Buddhism. And he said, that's very remarkable. So, it's interesting to hear him say that, because as much as Richard Baker has done that people don't like, he has many sides, and that's one very positive thing, one very positive aspect of something that may, in some other time may take a long, long time to happen.

[32:23]

Anyway, those are some of the things that come to my mind from your question. If I could just continue. It just seems that in some ways to sit and practice and are comfortable, it's not always I feel that it could be condemned by those who see it as being very sheltered from some aspects of the world. And I think that that's where culture or aspects of culture fails, is when it doesn't keep up with the very lively aspects of the world. You were saying about the Chinese mythology coming to an end of an era where many, many civilizations have missed that come to a change of a time, but right now.

[33:35]

And it seems that to begin to merge some of these great cultures together and to bring some understanding amongst these people such as John Birchers, who believed that Hindus drink urine, that's all they know of Hindus, Those kinds of... some types of program to bring it more into public view and bring in some types of dialogues. Okay. Well, world cycles, you know.

[34:41]

I don't know so much, actually. No, you didn't say what's a cycle of, but people believe in certain large cycles. We have a yearly cycle, right, of seasons. And then there are more subtle, larger cycles that are observable. And there are people that study cycles. And various cultures have always thought in terms of these various cycles. When you see events happening in certain ways over a long period of time, you begin to see the cyclical nature of them. Something begins and then reaches an apex and then disappears. Well, the thing is, you see, you can say that about almost any time.

[36:23]

So... I don't want to get too... put too much confidence in this cycle, in that particular cycle. But, yes. Well, in terms of any time and cycles, what strikes me about what's happened at Zen Center and in Zen in this generation is that it's almost as if we've seen a... a beginning and a flowering, a decline all in one generation, the kind of thing that used to take many hundreds of years. And things move so fast now that on the one hand you can say you can't get the ground for too long and we're just beginning. On the other hand, you have to keep in mind that things move so fast that you can't afford not to look up. and say, hey, wait a minute, what's going on over there? Oh, of course. Yeah, I'm not saying that you just keep your head to the ground.

[37:26]

It sounds like that, I guess. I'm just emphasizing something. Of course, all things happen at once. But even when you're cultivating the ground, there's a kind of flowering that's happening. in our lives will be absolutely complete, even though we'll have missed what will happen in the future. You can make your life absolutely complete, even though you miss what happens in the future. But, according to a growth of the practice, time, and the next one will be a certain time, and so forth. So even when there's a great flowering, they're still cultivating the ground.

[38:29]

Yeah, I guess what I'm concerned about is just, somehow, what you put on the foundation is real important. I guess there's never any guarantee about how it's going to come out. You just have to do the best you can with it. The flowering just happens. You can't make it flower. If you try to make it flower, you just have paper flowers. So, if you continue to just cultivate the ground, Someday you see the flower and it's just wonderful. But if you try to force the flower, it doesn't work. You can force flowers by putting them in the closet.

[39:38]

But it's a forced flower in the wrong season. And it's pretty. That's when you know everything about flowers. We don't know so much, though. I would like to be surprised. Anyway, that doesn't worry me a bit. We'll have flowers. What are the flowers? I don't know the numbers. I'm thinking that people are talking about numbers when they're talking about flowers. Maybe numbers or some great Zen masters, you know, will appear.

[40:47]

Very mature, wonderful people will appear. Do you think that that's necessary? the difficult time of the 70s is that we realized that there were no leaders to save the world, to save us. It seems that expecting flowers is maybe the wrong thought. Maybe that's waiting for Godot or waiting for something that isn't appropriate right now. Waiting. If you're expecting flowers, that's waiting. Yes. So, no, don't wait. But is it necessary to have leaders? Yeah. I mean, it's wonderful to find a genius, but Watts was a genius. He was a leader, but yet he was a human with his dark side that... Well... I don't know.

[41:52]

Yeah, it's necessary to have leaders. And they have dark sides. They're not perfect. But still, we need to have someone, to have people that manifest and represent the Dharma. I'm not clear on, when you say you can't cultivate the ground too long, you mean that you can't, that it can be overdone and you should change, no, you mean you can't? Can't be, yeah. I mean, you can over cultivate, but that's not what I mean. I mean, taking care of the ground. Can't do it too much. Yeah, that's right.

[43:19]

But I've always found, you know, I've been, I started doing vegetable gardening on Dwight Way, and I always found, I did a lot in the beginning, and I always found that dealing with the ground was the most interesting part. to have really good soil, to create really good soil was the most interesting part for me. And it also, you know, to watch everything grow was also interesting, you know, and to have the fruit was also wonderful. But the most interesting part to me was always creating the soil, putting nutrients in, making it loose and workable and available. Yeah? I'm confused because I found that the cultivating is the flower.

[44:21]

Oh, I see. Yeah, the flower is in the cultivating. The flower is the flower. The cultivating is the cultivating. But the flower is within the cultivating. Well, I don't mean that. I mean cultivating is the flower. That's right. Of course. Yes. Of course. So don't be confused. No need to be confused.

[44:47]

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