ten days, received transmission at Tazahara. And he's also a long-time friend of the Berkeley Thin Center. So we're glad to have him here today. Thank you. It's always good to be here. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. About the beginning of November, three of us Tenjin Reb Anderson and Catherine Thannis and myself went to Japan to Rinzō-in, which is the, you might say, kind of the home temple of Zen Center, and of course the Berkeley Zen Do, in Japan. And one of the reasons we went together was because this Dharma transmission thing is beginning to happen in Zen Center and in the Berkeley Zen Dome.

[01:08]

So it seemed like a good idea to natural sense, to kind of touch bases with home temple, which is Rinso-in, little fishing town in Yaizu. That is, it used to be a little fishing town, now it's a fair size city. So that was a very good experience. The three of us went there, and stayed for about three, four weeks in Yaizu, Rinzou-in temple, and shared in the practice at Rinzou-in, and also studied together, studied Dogen together, and Zazen, and morning service, and discussion, and things like that. That was very good experience. And then Hoitsu, The teacher at Rinzowin also came to the transmission ceremony at Tosahara last week, which happened to turn out to be a trio.

[02:24]

As of about two weeks ago, it was going to be a solo event, just me. Although I had actually long hoped it would be kind of a Magnificent Seven or something like that at least, I don't like to be kind of in the limelight, like solo, all that pressure, tension and so. So I was very happy that Blanche, who started, began in the Berklee Zendo and still very much considers herself a part of the Berkeley Zendo, was also there, and Paul Disko, who you also know from the old days anyway. Paul was here for a while and was taking care of the Berkeley Zendo for a while. So there were the three of us, Paul Disko, Blanche, and myself.

[03:27]

So we were there in Japan partly, by the way, because of a ceremony called Zuisei, which is something you do after Dharma transmission, and is a Soto school, Soto sect, important ceremony. So, Hoitsu felt that we should think about having some connection with the Soto school in Japan. See, as we are at the moment, we're independent. San Francisco, we're independent. Berkley-Zendo is independent. So we have complete, actually, freedom to do anything we want. But that also means that we have no connections with anybody else. No formal connections, at least. So we have no formal connections with the Soto tradition in Japan. The Soto-shu, I should say.

[04:30]

The Soto sect in Japan. in this Zuisei ceremony, which is touching home base at Eiheiji Temple and Sojiji Temple, where the two great founders of the Soto school taught at Eiheiji, Dogen Zenji, and Keizan Zenji in Sojiji. So you go and you express gratefulness in a ceremony and contact the source, so to speak. And then you are what you might call a fully qualified priest in the Soto school of Japan. Then you can give yourself, you can give transmission, you can give ordination, etc. And if we are going to connect with the Soto-shu tradition in Japan,

[05:34]

we felt that Oitsu's recommendation was a good idea that Mel and Reb and Les Kay and Bill Kong should all go to Japan and do this ceremony, Zuisei. So Reb was there partly in connection with that. So I don't know what you all think about the connection with the Sotoshu in Japan, a more formal one. So anyway, in the meantime, we are trying to do it our own way, which is a little bit different. So, being at Rinsow Inn was very, very much like being at home. And an ordinary schedule at Rinsow Inn begins with not what you might ordinarily think, that is, it begins with getting the kids out of bed and trying to get them off to school.

[06:37]

It's a typical neighborhood, you might say parish kind of temple. And Uesu's work is as more as a parish kind of priest than as a monastery teacher. It's much more like what we are familiar with here. as a family parish priest. He's married. He has three kids. One is about boys, about 12, and two girls, about 14 and 15, as I recall. And it's a busy family life. Busy from, I don't know, maybe like 4.30 in the morning until 10.30, 11 o'clock at night. They're busy. Very busy place. There are people coming, visiting, very frequently. There are groups that come to visit Rinzowin. The school teachers love to bring the kids to have a picnic at Rinzowin because it's kind of, it's beautiful there.

[07:46]

It's secluded and just back of Rinzowin there's a mountain where you can go climbing. So then he might give a little talk to the kids about Buddhism. And then in the evening, of course, is TV time. And Horitsu is there with his family watching TV, but not quite. He loves calligraphy. So he's almost, it seems amazing how frequently you see him with a brush, you know, sort of looks at TV a little bit and then writes with a brush. So he's very much a working priest. One of the things that he does is he teaches chanting, singing, Soto tradition poems and gathas. So like for example, three nights a week he has a class with different groups, mostly older women, who learn these songs, these little chants, these little gathas.

[08:55]

And By the way, I happen to be very fond of this. I think it's a beautiful kind of practice. So I went along to these lessons, and I learned one of the songs. So I thought I might maybe sing it for you, since you want me to sing it for you, right? So by popular request... It's short, the words are namu, honshi, which means adorations to, bowing to, honshi, the original teacher, which is Shakyamuni Buddha. Honshi, like roshi is teacher, old teacher, honshi is original teacher. So, namu, hail to, adorations to, bowing to, the original teacher. And then Shaka, which is short form Japanese for Shakyamuni and Nyorai, the Sagata.

[10:06]

So Namu Onshi Shaka Nyorai. So it goes something like this. shakanyorai namu hum shi shakanyorai Ah, came out pretty good. So, it's a very devotional kind of practice.

[11:11]

There's all these gathas, not necessarily devotional I would say, because there are also these wisdom gathas of the old ancestors and so on, which are also put to that kind of music. That happens to be one of the more musical of the gathas. That little one I just sang. So some of them, many of them don't, are not as musical. They are a little bit less exciting. So this is a living tradition. They're still writing melodies and still writing gathas for these. And it's very, popular and very important part of the Soto lay practice today, particularly amongst the women and particularly amongst older women. So as a part of men's lib, I joined these groups, which were all women, with the exception of Uitsu, who was their teacher, and sang

[12:24]

them. And I intend to learn more of these. I think it's a good way. So that same verse also has several other, that same melody has several other verses with it. So anyway, meanwhile, back at Tassajaran. This transmission ceremony was supposed to happen. I was apprehensive about it, of course. Partly because it is esoteric, it's a secret ceremony. So I didn't know what it was. I didn't know what I was getting into. However, As it turned out, we felt, Rev felt, quite free to talk about this, most of the parts of this ceremony, with the Tassajar students.

[13:37]

So I feel relatively free then, this morning, to talk about what I thought might be something I wasn't supposed to talk about, because it was supposed to be secret. Like Rev, for example, said, yes, it is private, intimate, And so in that sense, secret. This is like having a baby. It's a very private and intimate experience. And very, very special. But not exactly secret. Obviously, no one else can participate as thoroughly as the people involved themselves. Nowhere near as thoroughly. So in that sense, it's something that you can't join in. And so it is secret in that sense. But we can talk about quite a bit of it, and Reb was willing to talk quite a bit about this ceremony. Basically it takes a week. And Blanche and Paul and myself, we got up at 3 o'clock in the morning.

[14:43]

whereas the ordinary schedule is 3.55 and did Jundo which is bowing to the different shrines within the temple at Tassajara that's about 10 different shrines bow three times and then come back to the Zendo and join in morning Zazen and then service and breakfast and then after a break and study period We bow in the zendo to the ancestors. In front of the Buddha, we bow to the ancestors. That's about 92 bows, chanting the name of each ancestor and bowing down to the floor, which is called buso rai. So a regular part of our schedule was every day to do this jundo, that is offering incense, bowing. to the shrines in the temple, and buso-rai, which is bowing to the Buddha.

[15:50]

And then in the morning we would have instruction from Rev. Melvin Hoetsu. And in the ceremony and in the documents which accompany the ceremony, and amongst the most important documents are the Kyoju Kaiman, which is pretty much what you do for full moon ceremony. There are several translations of that. The one I remember at the moment is in Selling Water by the River by G.O. Kent, but there are also several other translations. And the Sandokai and the Hokyo Zanmai, and a commentary on the transmission ceremony, which is very valuable. All in all, I felt that the ceremony was just made surprisingly just plain good Buddhist sense, not something startling, something quite different, something magical or something like that.

[17:02]

Just rather on the contrary, I was struck with how it seemed to make just plain good Buddhist sense, with a few mantras and special stuff here and there, as you would expect, that too, but not as much as I actually thought there would be. So we did that then, and pretty much that kind of schedule. In the afternoon it was mostly either sewing or copying documents, And in the evening, which was different for Paul and different for Blanche and different for myself, Blanche was mostly sewing and I was mostly copying, for example. And then in the evening we would meet again for instruction from Huizhou, Mel, and usually, and Rip. So the first part of the actual ceremonies, of which there were three,

[18:12]

there's face-to-face transmission, there's receiving of the precepts, transmission of the precepts, and transmission of the law or denpo. And the first of those ceremonies, menju no ai, face-to-face transmission, is on the second day, as I recall, and you simply go in and bow, teacher who then says, the Dharmagate of face-to-face transmission from Buddha to Buddha, ancestor to ancestor, is realized now. So that's, it was reworded slightly, so the meaning is that you have realized it now. The Dharmakī, a face-to-face transmission from Buddha to Buddha, ancestor to ancestor, is realized now in you.

[19:16]

And you bow, three bows to the floor, and go. And this is the basic ceremony. This is the most basic part of the transmission ceremony, this face-to-face transmission. And Moon in the Dew Drop, the book of translations of Dogen, has a chapter on face-to-face transmission. So if you want to look it up and get some idea of what its significance is, an excellent source, which we studied, for us too, is Menju, face-to-face transmission, in the translation of Dogen's things in Moon and the Dew Drop. So, for example, if the teacher is sick, and is unable to perform the full ceremony, then he just does this. And this is recognized as transmission. Just this simple thing. And you, by the way, say nothing.

[20:18]

Your teacher just says these two lines and you say nothing. You go and that's it. And often the teacher is too ancient, you know, can't get up much, except somebody holds him up. So, to do these ceremonies, and so this basic ceremony, Menjud, is then recognized as an alternative form of transmission. And in this particular case, we have these relatively young teachers and these relatively ancient students. Blanche is, I think, well, I shouldn't say, but I'm about my age. And Paul is getting on there, too. So our average age, as I recall, we figured it was 57.

[21:19]

And we were thinking of doing Men's Union Ohio because the students were unable to get down to the floor and get up. And the average age of transmission in Japan, somebody said, I think Gil said, is 26. Now I think that may be a little young. That may be accurate or may not, I don't know. But anyway, fairly early in one's religious life, in the Japanese Soto tradition as it is today, you do receive transmission. And that's true for almost all Soto priests. So, if we are to do that kind of tradition, which I think maybe we do want to do, as my understanding is that we do want to follow many of the essential

[22:25]

many parts of the Soto tradition as it is in Japan. We have a lot of catching up to do. So there have been very few transmissions in Zen Center. There has been Richard Baker, of course, and Reb. And then Mel and Bill Kwong and Les Kay went to Japan to receive their transmission from Uitsu at Rinzuin. So in the meantime, we have all these gray air Students around Zen Center been there for years and years and years So we have some catching up to do and that it to some degree is what we are doing For example Catherine Thanes is working on her documents and Jerome Peterson is working on his and presumably maybe fairly soon probably certainly within the year that will be two more and and there's another crop coming on behind.

[23:30]

So, obviously, this is kind of a change for the way we think about brown-robed teachers. I mean, if someone like myself can do it, then good heavens, maybe almost anyone here can do it. That is, it's a very broadening. The leadership base is very much broadened in the Soto tradition in Japan. And that's somewhat revolutionary. This happens after the time of Dogen. And in Rinzai, this revolution never occurred. The teacher, the Roshi, is at a pinnacle. There's only a few hundred Roshis in the Rinzai tradition in all of Japan. And they're very lofty position, indeed. And transmission is equated with that. In Soto, there are probably about 12,000, almost all Soto priests, relatively early in their life, receive transmission.

[24:36]

So that means then, for one thing, it means that there's a lot more responsibility on each one of us, on each student. You don't have someone way at the pinnacle to project upon who does everything, decides everything, and so on. The base is much closer to the to a horizontal one. So the responsibilities of each student then are much greater. I was going to talk about also some things about Sōtō-shū structure and Sōtō-shū organization in Japan. But I don't want to explain.

[25:42]

You should have in your library a outline of the Sōtō-shū constitution, first 70 pages of it translated into English. And including a little digest of the Constitution with a few notes, which is very, very helpful. I did it. It's very, very helpful. It's a goldmine of information. It really is. On the Soto Shu tradition, how Zuisei works, ceremony that Mel and Red and Bill and Les will be taking within the next year or two, what that is. And what you can do upon receiving transmission, like when I received transmission last week in Tassara, what can I do? I can be a altar boy. Almost nothing.

[26:44]

If this were Japan, I would be qualified to do almost nothing. That's interesting. It says it all there. Ordinarily, transmission is very quickly followed by this Zuisei ceremony. The one that I just mentioned. And then, after you've done Zuisei, then you can do most of the things that a teacher or a priest does. But not until then. which is one of the reasons why this is important that they go to Japan and do this ceremony. It would be some real connection with the social tradition. Of course, we, Zen Center, Berkeley Zen Dojo, we don't have that. We're on our own. We've made up, to some degree, our own tradition, which we're perfectly free to do. So there's some confusion, of course, results. We're trying to lessen the confusion. And to understand how the Japanese tradition works, I highly recommend the Sōtōshū constitution.

[27:51]

Different classes of temples and who can do training periods and all that sort of thing. It's all there. So, I thought maybe some discussion would be more appropriate. I feel like some discussion would be more appropriate than these technical details. which I'm very much interested in, but I think would be overloading with relatively uninteresting information. Yes. Yes. Well, now this may be too direct a question, but I remember you lectured here not so many years ago, and you were in a suit, and you had on a saffron shirt that you bought from the Goodwill, and you said that that was your robe. And it seems as if a considerable distance has been accomplished between that robe and these robes.

[28:55]

Yes. And I was wondering if you could say anything about that distance. Yes. Yes. My reaction to this transmission ceremony has been mostly silence. I don't feel like I should say it very much. That includes clothes. So these are what I... roughly what I was supposed to be wearing, these clothes. And I considered actually wearing mine. Goodwill. This morning. And I thought, well, at least you can wear it under, you know. Which is what you do, you know, like they got the robes, China got the robes, the outer robes from India, but they were wearing these Confucian things, you know. So they just put the robe over the Confucian thing. This is a Confucian long-sleeve sort of thing, because Confucian scholars wanted to make it clear that they didn't use their hands for manual labor.

[30:04]

So they were scholars, and the hands never dropped down like that. They would write and things like that. obviously not a working garment, right? So, anyway, kuromo. Then, of course, when it came to Japan, Japanese were wearing their kimono, so on top of their kimono, they put their kuromo, which on top of which was the hokesa. So I was thinking of maybe instead of, at least instead of the kimono, I could wear my my goodwill outfit, the top of the goodwill outfit, and put the chroma on the top, the chroma and I could put the whole case on. If I had had the nerve, I would have put the whole case on top of my goodwill outfit, if I had had the nerve. I do have the nerve, actually, but at the same time I have this conflicting emotion, which is that I should

[31:09]

I shouldn't spout off, I shouldn't... I should be relatively silent. Actually, I was a little hesitant, I even thought of maybe calling you and telling you maybe I shouldn't lecture this morning, because it seemed maybe silence was more appropriate for me than spouting. I thought maybe, you know, take transmission and so on, then you're supposed to spout off, that's what I thought at first. Tell you about how it really is. I don't feel that. Silence is much more appropriate. Yes? Did Suzuki Roshi, Shinryu Suzuki Roshi, have this kind of contact with the Heiji and the hierarchy? Or from where does his lineage...? Yes. Yes. Yes. remained a Sotoshu priest his whole life and maintained that contact.

[32:16]

He was not so sure that we should declare independence as a corporation. As a non-profit corporation, we declared independence from the Japanese tradition. He wasn't so sure we should do that, but he sort of trusted us that whatever we decided about that would be the best way. And not long, by the way, before he died, he was planning to give transmission to 10 to 20 of his students. And he wanted to have Noiri Roshi, who is his very, very highly regarded Sotoshu priest in Japan, kind of authority on all kinds of things in regard to transmission and other things. So if he says that's the way you do it, that's the way you do it, there's no question about it. So you wanted Noiri to come here and assist him because his health was such he couldn't manage it himself to give transmission to 10 to 20 of his students.

[33:23]

And that would have been, so to speak, the Soto tradition transmission in accordance with the standards of the Soto Shu school in Japan. So what happens now when a priest receives tokugyo, or when you become a priest? Yes. And what happens to all these people, yourself included, in terms of documentation? Are you all going to have to play a monster game to catch up? That's a good question. They're very strict. I was in Los Angeles recently for Tokyo, and they are very strict about photographs, documents. They were going crazy down here. Yes, yes. Yes, and we did, Suzuki Roshi did try to do that, by the way.

[34:27]

For example, I was ordained in Rinzō-en, which should have made it easy, because it was in a In Japan, I was ordained in Japan, in a Japanese Soto temple, and he tried to register me three times. And he couldn't do it. The regulations were such that they didn't accept it. So, yeah, it's extraordinarily difficult. I would highly recommend that we don't try to play catch-up myself, but I don't know how it'll come out. Yes? How do, if there are so many ordinations, is there some way that they can recognize the higher level teachers? Yes. Yes, there are eight levels of teachers. So, when you take transmission, you're at the bottom, and then there are eight above that. And those are not levels of recognition by your teacher,

[35:32]

but by your peers, by your sangha, by the sangha. The peers of the sangha, the elders of the sangha give you this recognition and not your teacher. That's a big contrast to Rinzai's where the very top is in the form of recognition from the teacher to the student. Not so in Soto. So the sangha becomes very much more important in Soto. So amongst all these idiots who have received transmission, which soon we'll have quite a collection of, presumably, in Zen Center. As to which of them will be, has to be teachers, like the head of Zen Center or something like that, is more a sangha kind of decision, not a decision by some noji. Is there any recognition, no title change?

[36:38]

You received transmission and you got the roles. Yes. But there's no way, unless you were a member of this group, that you would know. Yes. Well, yes. If we were trying to translate the Soto tradition into American terms, which is very difficult. For example, my documents that I receive say Elder Ananda, which is a fairly literal translation of the Japanese, Elder. And I received this document from old tension, old tension. So you might say, old man. That's what it is actually, it's old man. And I'm elder. was received. But there's also some groups obviously feel sensei is a good word.

[37:42]

Suzuki Roshi in the early days was called Suzuki Sensei or Reverend Suzuki. The congregation there in Bush Street called him Suzuki Sensei, sometimes Reverend Suzuki. That's a good word too that might be of use. This Huizhou brochure felt that you could be registered. Is that for sure that you'd be registered? Was that a hesitancy to do so, a racial thing? Well, I would say rather kind of ethnocentric or something, right? Yes. We don't want to say race is very ethnic. It's an ethnic thing. Yes. Well, let me put it in another way. I often wonder why different Zen groups don't have more contact with other Zen groups. And is it because we think we are so superior that we just don't want to fraternize with these others?

[38:56]

I don't think so. Well, although there is a A bit of truth in that at the same time. But I think actually we're just so busy with taking care of our problems that we just don't have the energy and time left over to relate much to other groups. Even, you know, like we've been trying to get the different zendos within Suzuki Roshi's family to meet. And even that is quite an effort. We finally got something going. But it's mostly just we're so much concerned with our own problems that we don't have time to look over. And also then, in Japan, they're so much concerned with their own problems in regard to Soto Shu that all this stuff happening over, across the ocean, they don't have any forms for it. It's all the way things are in Japan. There are numerous government regulations, for example.

[39:56]

that the Soto-Shu school must abide by. So they are going to have to rethink their basic posture, so to speak, in order to be an international organization, and they haven't done that. Yes? I think maybe I can talk to you some other time. Okay. Yeah. Yes? It seems to me that in several of the books I've read about Buddhism in the West, one of the things I've read in several places was the complaint that Zen Buddhism in Japan, at least in the latter part of the 19th and early part of the 20th century, was viewed as, not in its words, deteriorating badly. And that indeed, the West and America, and perhaps even California, with the great hope of Buddhism. And so I wonder if you could say something about that in relation to renewing and intensifying contacts with Japanese.

[41:06]

Yes, that has been a common feeling in Japan. I know in Rinzai, the Roshis are very much concerned that the new generation, they just don't see that there's going to be the possibility of Much older. And the old models of practice, say for example in Sotoshu the importance of Zazen as the kind of the essence of the practice, you don't see too much of that in Sotoshu today. Zazen is comparatively rare and getting rarer. And in the old services, chanting and so, also are disappearing. And the number of people who at one time studied the different Hokyo Zanma, Sando Tai, etc., the different, the literature of Soto, and understood it, are getting fewer and fewer.

[42:18]

So many priests just chant, but they have no idea what they're chanting. And often even there is no morning service. There is no daily, what we recognize as a daily religious schedule. So yeah, many of the thinkers in Rinzai and Soto are hoping that there will be a new era of Zen, perhaps led by the West. And I don't know exactly what they're thinking today. For example, in the early days of Zen Center, we were very optimistic in that respect. And I would say that in recent years, we have sobered up somewhat.

[43:21]

We were very excited about being the vanguard of a new era and to the extent that we even thought that we might be able to bring back the true practice to Japan. Very optimistic and very enthusiastic and somewhat drunken, I would say, in our excitement. And the result was a hangover and sobering up. a more realistic, I think, recognition of our own faults and of our, not only of our teachers, but also of ourselves. I think much of the recent, in recent years, the trauma of Zen Center and other Zen Centers has been sobering up a realization that we're human beings, our teachers are human beings, and we are not so terribly different from other human beings.

[44:31]

So I think then that myself, I don't necessarily think that Zen might be so terribly important in the West. It's quite possible that it's very shaky. I feel some of that myself. I think one of the reasons why we are returning to some degree to the Japanese tradition in Japan is because we are not so sure. So, I too am not so sure. Obviously we have many, many and trying to keep on going through it that we've lasted this long is pretty good. Yes? Could you say anything at all about the notion of separating transmission from the priesthood? I mean, the only sort of precedent that I've heard about that is in A. J. Roach's lineage, where they have teachers with transmission who are considered lame.

[45:44]

Yes. that really considers itself sort of partly Soto and partly Rinzai. Do you have any idea how that fits in with what you're saying? Yes. Yes, Reb said down in Tassajara that one of the ways of thinking about that that he thought might be helpful is that priest is when you take denpo and up to that time you were a student priest or a novice priest or a trainee priest not priest, but student priest or novice priest. So that when you do take transmission, denpo, then you are qualified to do various priestly functions, not before then. That is the Soto-shin tradition in Japan. Until denpo, hence we say, which ordinarily are almost together, you are not qualified to do, to lead morning service, to

[46:46]

funeral ceremonies, marriage ceremonies, nothing other than as a layman might. And then Robert Aitken, who is of the Yasutani Harada Yamada lineage, is a independent Soto Rinzai tradition. Harada declared independence from the Soto Shu school, And they are trying to have a way which is inclusive of both Rinzai and Soto. And of course in Rinzai, there is no correlation, no tie between being priest or a layman in regard to transmission. A layman might receive Dharma transmission. Not so in Soto. only priests, or novice priests if you will, receive dharma transmission.

[47:56]

So Robert Aitken is following then that Rinzai part in that particular respect. To that I would add that in many ways I think we are all laymen. If you contrast lay with monks, which the old Buddhist tradition is there are no priests, there are laymen and there are monks. Novice monks, if you will, also, but there are no priests. And you take 250 precepts as a bhikkhu, and you take Panchasila, five precepts, as a layperson. As an entering monk, you would take 10 precepts, 10 monastic precepts, We don't take any of those precepts. Dogen, as far as we are able to guess, did. He took 250 precepts. He was a bhikkhu.

[48:56]

In the centuries that followed Dogen in Japan, the monastic precepts were dropped. They're not taken in Soto-shu today. They haven't been for centuries. We take Bodhisattva precepts. We take the ten major precepts, the three pure precepts, and the three treasure precepts, three refuge precepts, those sixteen precepts. Same for laymen, so-called priest, so-called monk, so-called roshi, whatever. The same precepts. Those are not monastic precepts. So, if we contrast monastic with lay, I would say that we are all lay persons. So one of the ways I think about myself, for example, is as a lay priest. From good will. Yes?

[50:00]

Maybe it's not necessary, but I'm having difficulty wrapping my mind around the concept of, maybe it's my own perceptions getting in my way, of someone who has received dharma transmission who is a lay person. or who is not a priest. I'm having a lot of difficulty grasping what this looks like, or would look like. Yes. One of the ways of thinking about it, which makes a good deal of sense, I think, some real sense, is as a yogic tradition. So, the social part of it comes up in much later centuries. The Buddhist first students, I think you should think of their practice not as fulfilling functions, like getting people married and funeral ceremonies and so on, but as meditation, a yogic, meditative yogic tradition. So if you think of this transmission ceremony as some sort of consecration or initiation in a yogic kind of sense, not necessarily any social consequences.

[51:04]

The lay and the priests and so on are kind of social kind of language, a lay-like householder. So, for example, originally in the Buddha... amongst the Buddhist students, Shakyamuni's students, there were lay people who we see who attained enlightenment, recognized by the Buddha and so on. So I think of it as, in that sense, it's primarily a yogic, meditative Yes. You mentioned something about being, not being terribly different from other humans. I was wondering in the philosophy of Zen Buddhism, what are some of the difference, major difference or differences between Buddhism and humanism?

[52:07]

Well, my first reaction to that is certainly the easiest distinction would be that the Buddha nature in every sentient being is in all things. So humanism is certainly asserting the values of mankind. But for Buddhism, Mahayana, Zen, it's very, very important that it's all... Buddha nature is everything. Rocks, stones, trees, plum blossoms. So that is a bit different, I think. Other differences... Zen... is also emphasizes, and this isn't necessarily contrary to humanism, but it emphasizes certainly the relationship of student to a teacher.

[53:21]

So it's very easy, I think, for Zen student types, who tend to be very independent types, to not relate to a teacher. I'm not about to bow down to some teacher, I'm a Zen student. Very fierce kind of self-reliance kind of partner Zen. They're very strong in Zen. But equally strong, and I think maybe actually more important, more basic, is that you relate to someone, to relate to an actual living being, who somehow embodies the teaching, the tradition. So, for example, myself, Suzuki Roshi, who was my teacher, died. And I didn't know what to do.

[54:26]

Being self-reliant type anyway, I sort of went off into my own island. I'm quite happy there, actually. But I didn't feel it was Zen. If it was Zen, you have to relate. And I figured that as wise as I am, Dahlberg, as wise as you are, certainly you do have a few things yet left to learn, don't you? Yes, that's right. Well, then you should go find somebody and try to learn that from some person, from a body. So there was this young fellow, Rev, you know, 20 years my junior. Rather difficult for him, as you can imagine. But I felt I have to. This is Zen, and that's what I want to do, is Zen way of practice, to relate to somebody. I do have something to learn.

[55:28]

So, I think that's a very important part of the Zen tradition. this intimacy, that it's actually, it's not something just in books. It's real live people, and particularly two people face to face. Yes. Yes. The problem with religion in the West was that it became more institutionalized, and Part of the reason why people went to the religion of the East was because people wouldn't find the living spirit in the Western religion. Yes. Because what was a little obvious was the outside social institution. Yes. My concern would be that since there's all this question about the spiritual Dharma transmission, which a teacher shows us a way to practice, and then we translate it

[56:33]

ourselves, the Dharma through our Buddha nature, a way of practicing. And then there is the social, institutional sort of recognition, which is the ceremonial form of that. And I guess one concern would be that in trying to bring all this elaborate sort of organized religious structure the living spirit, or the real thing, which is the practice, which partly was going out in Japan, would also then, in one thing, get confused with the other, and then the primary becomes secondary, and the secondary becomes primary. Yes. Yes. I feel that Zen practice, Zen center practice, should be a universe of practice. So that all kinds of practice would be going on.

[57:39]

There would be, there would be hermits in the caves up near Tassajara. There would be Bodhisattva, lay Bodhisattva types working in hospices. This is all Zen center. And there would be people burying their noses in the sutras and just fascinated with that sutra stuff over there. So, And there would be people who are just love forms, like Morioki and so on, and they do it beautifully. All day they just do these beautiful forms. They love to do that. And there are people who are very much maybe concerned with making it a natural way, harmony with the everyday life of America, Berkeley, family life, etc. householder or whatever. So I think that we should have a universe of practice and in part of that universe would be Soto-shu as it is in Japan today.

[58:49]

Maybe in some respects on its last legs but respecting that too. I mean that's the kind of a stage, a natural life stage I'd say. You know people get old and they forgetful and frail and ossified, and so do institutions. So we should respect our elders, like I'm getting. Well, never mind. You should respect your... And we should respect the Japanese Soto-shu as it is in its current stage, natural stage of institutionalization and decline and so on. So I don't see, and so I think we should be very wary of comparing apples and oranges or whatever, where there's no need to it. There's plenty of room for all these kinds of practices within the kind of Zen center, kind of Zen I think of, and plenty of room for your way, my way,

[60:01]

Thank you very much. That's a good end there. It's been very interesting and people who want to talk more can talk. All right. Yes. Yes. Yes.

[60:11]

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