I vow to chase the truth of the Tathagata's words. Oh, good evening. Can everybody hear me okay? Great. It's really fitting to have Suzuki Roshi's picture up here, I guess for the founder's ceremony that we'll be having tomorrow morning. Today I think there's going to be kind of a celebration of Suzuki Roshi in that I'm going to be giving the talk on the chapter, Not Always So, out of his book, Not Always So. I was given a choice of what to talk about, and I said, well, nobody else had picked Not Always So. We have to talk about that one since it's the title chapter, in a sense. So I picked it, and it also turned out that I had a recording of the lecture that was used as the source for the essay. Ed Brown, I think with Mel's help, got a transcription of the lecture and edited it down to what we see in the book.

[01:09]

So one of the things I plan to do tonight is to play the excerpts that I have that are now on my iPod. I'm going to play them on the speaker here. And we'll see how it works. There's about 26 minutes or so of excerpts that I've got out of a 50-minute talk. And in some cases, you'll be able to follow in the book, almost word for word, what Suzuki Roshi says. And in other places, it'll be very mystifying, you know, that what he's saying doesn't seem to correspond to what you're reading in the book at all. And in a couple of places, actually, they had reorganized the paragraphs. One paragraph that they have toward the middle is really toward the end of the actual lecture itself. So, anyway, we'll encounter that. We need to thank Jean Selkirk. Many of you know her. She's our tape librarian.

[02:13]

She worked very closely with the people in San Francisco Zen Center who actually own the rights to Suzuki Roshi's tapes. I was given copies of about 30 tapes, which are considered to be, I guess, some of the best of Suzuki Hiroshi's talks that they've recorded. And I digitized them, put them on CDs and DVDs, and gave them back to the San Francisco Zen Center. The major reason for that was to have a stable medium, a more stable medium, rather than the old tapes, so that the talks could be preserved. over a longer period of time. We did a little research, and you can buy a CD that's supposed to last for 300 years, and a DVD that's supposed to last for 100. And I've been told, Chris is not here tonight, but we have a sangha member who's actually a producer, a record producer, and is very good at this sort of thing. And he tells me that you can even go longer than that.

[03:15]

But I'm privileged then to have a copy of these tapes. Unfortunately, we can't really distribute them in a general way because the San Francisco Zen Center is still trying to decide how they want to manage this property. You know, there's one side they want to, you know, we're told that we need to share the Dharma. We're not supposed to be parsimonious with the Dharma. On the other hand, there's a need for the Zen Center to have an income stream to support its Dharma activities. So they're still trying to decide exactly how that's going to work. But I thought that tonight, since this is an excerpt and we're not really going to be distributing it in any kind of way, it would be a nice way for us to see it. It's going to be, some of you might have trouble listening to him, so I thought I'd play the first couple of paragraphs and then stop and we can talk about it a little bit and then I'll start over again. Sort of get your ear used to hearing him talk and his cadence and the way he pronounces words and things like that.

[04:20]

And we'll also have to do a volume check here. There is a famous story. Water is safe, but water is for human being. And for celestial beings, it is Jew.

[05:27]

And for fish, it is their home. And for people in hell or hungry ghosts, it is blood. Or maybe fire. If they want to drink it, the water changes into fire. So they cannot drink it. Same water. Looks like. Very different. But you may say, our understanding of water is right. It should not be home, or house, or jewel, or plant, or fire.

[06:43]

It should not be so. Water should be water. But though you can say it's, you know, though you say what it is not quite right. It is not right. Okay, so those are the first two paragraphs. And you can see that they're pretty faithful. So what's written in the book to what he actually says here? So I guess I'd like to invite some comments at this point. Questions or something like that? Well in these first two paragraphs, at a certain point I was wondering Water is not always what we think it is.

[08:01]

Or whatever water is, is so dependent on circumstances and different emotional states of human beings. I first became acquainted with this concept reading science fiction back in the 50s. I don't know if any of you people are familiar with it. There's a guy named Van Volk, I think it's pronounced. He wrote a book called Null A, or Not Aristotelian. Aristotelian logic, A is A. So this guy wrote this book saying, no A is not A, which is what Suzuki Roshi is saying. A is not A. And then E.B. White and James Thurber, I don't know if most of you probably know who they are, I remember reading books about how to write, and they always said, you have to be careful, the word is.

[09:07]

And I never did understand what they meant by that. I think what Coe is saying is sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that A is A, or water is water. Or, I am right. Because, I guess, am is another way of saying is. I am right. He is wrong. That sort of thing. So what did you think of Suzuki Roshi? Did you have any... Were you able to follow it? Should I turn the volume up? Anything like that? I thought I would rewind, basically, and play those first two paragraphs again. Just again to sort of just get your ear used to hearing it talk. That would be the idea. So let's see where we are. I'll do is I'll go through the first first two paragraphs and then I'll just let it go on to the third paragraph as well. same but water is for human being is water and for celestial being for celestial being it is Jew and for fish it is

[11:03]

their home. And for people in hell or hungry ghosts, it is blood or maybe fire. If they want to drink it, the water changes into fire, so they cannot drink it. Same water looks like very different, but it means that our understanding of water is right. It shouldn't be home, or house, or jewel, or plant, or fire.

[12:12]

It should not be so. Water should be water. But Doyle then says, you know, if Doyle said water is water, it is not quite right. is not right. I think we practice Zazen and this is right practice and the attained will acquire and it's something right But if you ask Dongen Tenshin, he will say not quite.

[13:19]

This point should be... This is maybe a good call for you to work on. Why do we say water? Okay. So this talk was given in August of 1969 in the middle of a multi-day Sashin, probably a seven-day Sashin. And so he says, you should think of this as a koan for your study. He goes on to say, during the remainder of the Sashin, two or three days that are left in it. You know, Mel talks about the, a couple weeks ago he talked about the koan about the student who imitated his teacher by pointing a finger up. You know, the teacher had used finger pointing up as a way of illustrating his understanding of, his understanding.

[14:30]

And the student, I guess a young boy, I don't know how old he was, 20, 30, was imitating him. And so I read this paragraph and I say, yeah, not quite right, right. I'll just remind myself all the time, not quite right. Which I think is probably a pretty good idea. But I also think I could be that boy pointing to the, wherever it is, sort of imitating the understanding rather than really knowing the understanding itself. However, I still continue to remind myself, you know, well maybe it's not quite right. And I took a class on type A behavior many years ago by the man, I don't know if you're familiar with type A behavior, but this guy, a cardiologist, realized that most of his patients were very hyperactive, very stressed out people.

[15:33]

And he did a study and realized that there was a couple of different behavior patterns of hostility and anger and time urgency. that really exacerbated heart disease and made it worse. And one of the things that he developed was a class to try to train people away from type A behavior. And one of the things that he basically taught was, remind yourself it's not always so. Although he would say it, remind yourself, maybe I'm wrong. I'm in an argument with my wife, right? I say to myself, and to her, maybe I'm wrong. And just the fact of saying that sort of reminds me and slows me down and sort of makes me less emphatic and whatnot. So I have this idea of not always so. It seems like it's kind of analogous sort of thinking. And the class actually did reduce my Type A behavior according to them. transcribing the classes from the Practice of Greater Tathagatagarbha, which is my practice.

[16:45]

And in one of Sojin's classes he says, I remember Suzuki Roshi, Well, I've listened to this tape now maybe 20 times. And when I was carving it up, I would listen to it with a pause button. And so I'd be playing it along, and I could actually see the wave, the audio wave, and I could stop it right where it is, and then I would carve out that little piece, cut and paste it into a wave file, and then transcribe it onto the iPod. So I listened to the thing many times. And I still have, I still remember it, even after all that time. It's very difficult.

[17:46]

But it's kind of fun. I'd like to do more of it. So shall we go on? I think I have the next chapter, the next paragraph. When we say water is water, we understand substantially, you know. Yes, water. What we say water, it may be H2O. This is not actually, may not be actually water. So, under some conditions, H2O became liquid, but under some conditions it may be paper.

[18:52]

So you cannot say, here is water, because water is not constant. So it is changing. And because it exists under some conditions, it is something which exists in the rules of or rules of causality. So, because of some reason, some cause, water just tentatively became water. That's all. So, we cannot say water is water. Tentatively, for convenience sake,

[19:55]

We can say water is water. But it is not always so. You may understand in this way. But when Dorendel says, that is not a complete answer. We should actually appreciate the water in its true sense. Water is something more than just water. So here you got an example of where the editors took out some of the business that you heard him talk about of emptiness and codependency. You heard that part, which is not part of this.

[20:58]

I thought that was kind of interesting. What does he mean by this is an example of codependency and emptiness? And I was thinking, you know, we could take water, We can take everything else, including ourselves, and we can think that we exist forever and we're permanent. We're here forever and for good, and we will not change, at least the important part of us will not change, and that's the way it is. And interdependence says, actually, what we really are is dependent on all the other things that are around us, that we are basically made from, certainly the chemicals and the atoms and whatnot of the universe. And the energy we get comes from outside of us, that animates us. And so really, we don't really exist ourselves except for what we borrowed from outside.

[21:59]

So we can say, I is I, or Richard is Richard, or water is water, but it's not just water. It's something more than water. It's really the whole universe, if you will. So that was kind of my understanding of what that is. Ko? Yeah, I enjoyed the fact that he said interdependent, because I wrote right by the sentence, ourselves is in a co-dependent relationship which is circumstances. And so I like the fact that I have written in there co-dependent, and I need something to depend on. And I should write it with a K. No, that's different.

[23:03]

We're all co-dependent. Sue? Well, I'm having the image of how kids behave, little kids, because, you know, if you have a bed, it's not a bed, it's a trampoline, or it's used to such, or, you know, if you have a cat or something, it's obviously what you think is one thing the cat has the right use of it. It gets really hard and rigid about, let's say, my opinion about something or the way I look at something. It becomes very heavy and difficult. For instance, you can have a particular view of sex, or pleasure, or money.

[24:04]

This is how we're supposed to be. He gets to be rigid. In a sense, by picking water as his example, he picked a very easy thing to talk about. I think the things that you brought up are much more difficult. It's easy for me to say, yeah, water's not water, I know that, or water is water, provisionally and whatnot. But who should be the next Supreme Court Justice? I'm pretty clear about it. some of that. Or money. I think those are good points. Much more difficult to deal with. Much more difficult to believe it's not always so. But I really appreciate the discussion or the conversation about water because it's a path into perhaps the process of water.

[25:18]

Actually, you know, I heard it as paper. The paper has got water in it. Paper's made up of water. You know, I haven't. That would be interesting to know. They didn't want to challenge us, or they... I was thinking that they were, and I'm guessing, I have no idea, they were trying to pattern the book in a sense that's similar to Zen Mind and Beginner's Mind, so that the paragraphs or the essays are kind of short, they're only a couple of pages long, and that sort of thing. So they just had to cut some stuff out. And the next one here, or the one after that, you can see they really cut things out because he goes to a much different place than where the essay seems to take us.

[26:40]

I'm looking forward to the fact that we can get access to the rest of these tapes, and I think we will. We can hear what he says in its entirety and get rid of the editor, the middleman. people who don't necessarily familiar with the the buddhist term of interdependence without being explained about yeah okay so let's go on more go on to the next uh next paragraph oh peter one of the thing on that note i think the other side of that another view of that though is you transcribe in mel's classes it's become really apparent to me that Again, a lot of what Mel is doing in these classes is fumbling for words and broking the dark and finding his own way to express the Dharma.

[27:51]

And I have to restrain myself from editing while I'm transcribing because it's so clear to me that he was aiming for a certain point. to the idea of doing things and moving things around and editing. And because of the way in which our teachers teach, it's not the normal logical, consequential kind of speech. And it works in person, but I don't know that it works so well on paper. Two different ways of expressing ideas, paper and oral. Paper is paper. So I think this is paragraph 5. When we drink water, water is everything to me.

[28:55]

And the whole world is water. Nothing exists besides water for me. When we brings both with this understanding and attitude. That is both, but that is at the same time, it is more than both. I find that there's something very paradoxical about what he's saying. I mean, if you sort of follow rationally this thing about not oversold, it seems like you could get to a place where you just really didn't have any confidence ever of anything, and you sort of felt stymied or hamstrung, but that's not where he goes.

[30:13]

when you're drinking water. He doesn't lack confidence in the way that he's talking about it. He's saying, when you're drinking the water is everything. It's sort of like more than you. The not always so is really pointed in a certain direction, that things are more than you think they are or something. It's pretty interesting. How do you sort of get, keep from getting sort of trapped in this sort of, I don't know, morass of insecurity around how you never know what anything is, so you can't do anything or something? Massive relativity. Everything is relative and doesn't have any... But when you have a glass of water and you're drinking it, right then and right now, there's just water. But water really is water. Right, it's not that at that moment you're thinking, well, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. You're not doing this thing to sort of undermine something.

[31:22]

Very good. One of the things I was just struck with in seeing this is that, for me, it had this impact of a personal experience of his. This is how I experience it when I'm drinking water. And it kind of throws you, it's like, you know, usually when I drink water that's not how I experience it. So he has a teaching, because I think what you're saying is that actually during the lecture he picked up the water and he drank some, which I think he did. So his teaching was that he did that with just He just did it. He didn't do it thinking about something else.

[32:24]

He just thought about drinking water. Go? Well, it's interesting what you're bringing up about, well, you know, doesn't it make everything so relative that it's just something to drink water, that you might spill it on yourself, but you think, well, it's really water. Yeah, you know, it's like, it's not, So the encouragement is like, don't see things just on your narrow little range, which is where you're going to spill water on yourself more likely when things are narrow. It's the difference between relativity and codependency. Yeah, I like that. I like that difference between relativity and codependency. Or dependent co-arising.

[33:26]

Because co-dependency has other connotations. It does, doesn't it? A year ago, Seed's class, we were meeting with Arjuna, and there's, there's, it's all about, you know, there's nothing but dependent co-arising. There's nothing. that's separate, there is only dependent co-arising, which the author of the book reversed was DCA. But that's all there is. And I think it's as much the notion, not just not always so, but the interconnectedness, that everything arises together, and things are the way they are because of Water is water when the conditions are right for it to be water.

[34:30]

You know, a certain temperature, pressure, etc, etc. Whatever. But it's the... I think one of the things he's really trying to get us to see is the connectedness, and then also just not getting invested in our own view of things. So that, you know, your example of the Supreme Court Justice. are absolutely correct, that there just might be some sliver of other views that might be worthless to them. It's trying to get us not so invested in the way we see things and to understand that country but of foreign culture you realize there's a whole different way of doing things and looking at things and seeing the world that's things we take for granted they don't and they take other things for granted and I mean I think it's that kind of thing as well as the interdependence.

[35:39]

He talks about traveling further in the chapter you know this idea of co-independent, co-arising, or dependent co-arising. Remember, I was watching a television program, a science program on television, talking about lightning. And you know, I don't know about you, but I was taught that lightning was built up because clouds do their thing, and charges separate you. I've got the positive here and the negative here, and then suddenly there's so much different charge that they do their thing, and you get lightning. The scientists in Florida started measuring and they said, you know, there's not enough current, there's not enough electricity, there's not enough energy in these clouds to do that. And now they think that maybe the energy is actually coming from outer space, from cosmic rays that are constantly bombarding the planet. These cosmic rays, of course, are coming from way out there, you know, from stars that have exploded millions and billions of years ago, and this energy is coming in and giving us our lightning.

[36:42]

I said, wow, that's wonderful! I saw a science program on TV too, and it was talking about how physicists have been trying to track what actually happens from the moment after the Big Bang. So they're leaving the Big Bang alone. But right after, until now, is what they've been looking at. They've been filling in pieces. And they were actually able to say, at first it was like this, there was so much energy that you couldn't form atoms. Then at a certain point you could, there was a light that was allowed to be emitted. And they kind of tracked it. And what I thought was so nice was that, what they said was that life was an inevitable extension of what started at the Big Bang.

[37:45]

And they explained how different atoms are concentrated, and that's what's needed for life, and blah blah blah, and all the details. But what was so nice was the concept that This is just a natural part of what's going on. And what you are is just this transient expression of this huge, long process that's been happening since the Big Bang. 13.7. Is it time for a break, Ross? Yeah, it's 13.7. This be a good time for break? I think it probably would be. Yeah. So now I'm going to play paragraph 7, I think, if I'm right on sync here, which this paragraph 7 starts, I think I understand why you practice zazen.

[38:49]

I think I understand. Why? But I think most of, and I think most of you are trying to seek for something, something true, something real. Because the world is too much unrealistic and Too many, you know, too many things is taught and we hear too many things which we cannot accept, believe,

[39:58]

So I think you seek for something true and real. And you don't seek for even something beautiful. Something beautiful is not To you, I think, it's not true or real. It looks like beautiful, but actually you don't think that it's reality. It is just outlook of something.

[41:10]

It is just all of it. For someone who is not honest enough. So, justice doesn't mean anything. Beauty doesn't mean so much. Some virtue doesn't mean so much. Virtuous person. Mostly, you know, maybe hypocrisy I think you feel in such a way because so many beautiful things so many things was told something like true and so many virtuous persons appeared

[42:41]

but who didn't convey their writing. You couldn't trust him. So this moves on to the next paragraph. When someone has a question, I think I'll just go on to the next paragraph. I don't say the border is born. One, two, three, house. I don't say so. But, really, according to the orientation, Water is something more than that.

[43:51]

We stick to deliciousness or beauty or virtue. But there is something more than that. So you may have noticed that paragraph 8 cut out quite a bit of the first part of that paragraph. I don't know where that went, but it's not on there. But I think it's an interesting point, and maybe I'll just read it and talk about 7 and 8. When I first heard it, I misheard it. I thought he was saying, you know, you came here to find truth, and that's what I'm delivering to you is truth. And as I listened to it more and more, I realized, no, that's not what he's saying. He's saying, you came here for truth. You already know that beauty ain't so good, because that's pretty easy.

[44:52]

But you come here for truth, and because of our principle of not always so, even truth is a bit of a problem coming up with. So what do we have left to stand on? Because he says that, he says in the first part of paragraph 8, you don't know who to trust or what teaching to believe, so you come here looking for something. I cannot give you what you're seeking because I myself don't believe in any particular thing. I thought it was really interesting. That's the first couple of sentences in paragraph 8. So even if you're coming for the truth, and you think you're coming here for the truth, maybe not. Or maybe you're coming here for the truth, but maybe that's not what we're trying to give you. Anybody have any comments? If you get an answer from somebody else, you're not using the full power of your mind.

[46:07]

So your understanding should always come from yourself. So if you come here to get the truth, well, that's less than Yes. Go on. I love you too.

[47:09]

Okay, and then it's the end. Well, shall we go on? Because I know some people really want to hear more of Suzuki Roshi, so... I noticed that you like trip very much. Today, Alaska. Next day, India. And Tibet. I don't think that is right too. You are seeking for something, blood, or jewels, or something like that. But, because we come to that When we cannot believe those things, we should change our way in seeking the truth.

[49:17]

So, let's talk about travel. You know, one of my goals next year is to do a lot of traveling. I plan to go to Alaska. I listen to this and I say, well, wait a minute now, Richard, what are you doing? And I'm trying to find a reason why I can go to Alaska. But I haven't found it yet. I think Ann said something just a little while ago that sort of talked about when we go somewhere else, we can see how other people live and we can see how other people believe. And I know I've noticed that. And it shakes me out of my belief that, of course, what I think is the right way to think and what I feel and what I do is the right way to think and feel. So I guess in that sense, you know, travel is broadening. And I know back in the old days, monks were, one of the things that monks did after they'd studied for a while was to go on long trips, I think probably for the same reason, to see what's going on in the world.

[50:27]

So I think what he's talking, so in a sense, you know, traveling has a positive element to it. So, but he's sort of poo-pooing it here. I was wondering how come he's doing that. Yeah. You know, what comes up is traveling as kind of accumulating, what, and here, [...] you know, the checklist. Traveling as a material kind of thing, as opposed to just going and seeing what's there, to organize, not expecting to get a certain thing or to, you know, have an idea about a place and bring it home and know what it was. So there's sort of a greedy component. I'm going there to get something. I thought it was a lot more, there was something empty in a way about all the traveling.

[51:56]

It was, you know, something more, you know, about, more adventurous in a way. It seemed like I was trying to find out. I used to think, and I still do. But now that you've sat for so many years, Richard, I think it's okay for you to travel. Thank you. You wanted to know your travels. Your van. My little camper van with my wife, yes. That's right. That's the idea. Yeah. In the past, and even in the present, I've always thought that coming here to a Sashin was one of the great adventures Um, just, just being here, just sitting, staring at the wall was one of the great adventures. Discovering, basically kind of, um, traveling through my mind, if you will. Not purposely, not through analysis, you know, but just seeing what comes up and just, just watching that and seeing that is kind of interesting.

[53:05]

It's kind of like seeing the Rushmore and the Grand Canyon and all these thoughts and feelings coming up and whatnot. It's really interesting. So. what you can carry, and things get very simple in a way that can get very complicated too. So it has a sort of solitude of that. Yeah, you're kind of alone in a sense because everyone else is a stranger around you. The way I'd really like to travel is I'd like to go someplace, rent an apartment and live there for three to six months. And then go someplace else and live there for three or six months. That would be the way to do it. I don't know if I can arrange that or not, but that's kind of what I'd like to do. You did it at Tassajara? Yeah, three months at Tassajara and my wife was very happy. I don't know if, well, that's a family issue. Let's see what happens in the future.

[54:10]

Shall we go on? To seek for some good teaching, like Buddhism. It's to seek for something good. Sightseeing people. Even though you don't take a trip by car, but spiritually you are making sightseeing. Oh, beautiful teaching. This is true teaching. We said, you some can't see.

[55:13]

Yusang means to, with prayerful mind, to go to mountain or to go to river or ocean. Some place where you can enjoy view of things. Yusangkan. This is the danger of it. Danger. Then, practice. Don't... Be careful. So that you may not be involved in practice of useless fantasy. It doesn't help at all.

[56:17]

It doesn't help. If you have right understanding of yourself, and right understanding of practice, then you can see it will help. But if you don't know the actual Well practiced. Directly. Whatever you study doesn't help at all. Or we say, you shouldn't be fooled by things. Fooled by things. Fooled by something beautiful. fooled by something it looks like true.

[57:27]

Don't be involved in playing games. This is also and always a suggestion. You should trust Buddha, trust the Dharma, and trust the Sun. in its true sense. Because that is Sangha. Okay. Trust Buddha, trust Dharma, trust Sangha in its true sense. I heard that. I had no idea what that means. It's interesting. And I thought about it some more and I thought, well, I know what it means. And now I've forgotten again. It's something like... I think of Buddha as like meditation, you know, just...

[58:32]

just accepting what comes up, like I was saying earlier, just seeing what's going on in the mind, just accepting what happens during meditation. And I guess Dharma, you know, he talks about don't study Buddhism and think, oh, this is a wonderful thing and I have to do this. And I was thinking about like precepts, you know, we could take precepts like, you know, I vow to do all that is good. I vow to do no evil. Those are really important guidelines. But if we take them too seriously, then we become very rigid about what it is we're going to do. I vow not to steal. Maybe there's an ethical time when stealing is the right thing to do. But if you fall in love with that sort of thing, then you have trouble with it. So you want to be careful of that. And Sangha, I know it's easy for me to have a very idealistic view of all of us. Oh, we're all Zen students, so we must be wonderful people. But sometimes we're not.

[59:38]

You know, if each of us makes a mistake, makes just one mistake a day, and there are 30 of us, and that's 30 mistakes, that's a lot of mistakes in just one little community. And if you think of that in the whole world, if everyone is doing their best and just makes one mistake a day, that's a whole lot of mistakes piling up in the world. So things are not going to be perfect. So that's kind of how I think about that idea of, in its true sense. But I'd like to invite other people's comments. I think if you want something, then it's easy to be fooled. If we don't want anything, then there's nothing to be fooled. Whatever's happening is happening. But as soon as we want something to be true, we want something to be beautiful,

[60:42]

Trust Buddha, trust Dharma, trust Sangha, it's true sense, takes me back to water is not always just water, or water isn't only water. To me, you're saying exactly the same thing in a different way. Yeah, Buddha is Buddha, Dharma is Dharma, and Sangha is Sangha, No, that's good. I like that. Now, the next paragraph is the, I don't know if you call it the topic paragraph or what it is, but it's at the very beginning, or one of the sentences that's in this paragraph, which comes from the little banner, the towel-sized paragraph at the very beginning.

[61:53]

So, and I read it, and it's just really... to feel freedom, weariness, love, this kind of trust and love. Instead of bothered by this busy life, we should wear this civilization without being bothered by it, without ignoring it, without being caught by it.

[62:59]

So without going somewhere, without escaping it, We should have composure in this busy life. So I like that image of wearing civilization. Because, you know, there's this song which you may have all heard. You've got to be taught, carefully taught, to hate all the people your relatives hate. And it goes on like that. You may have heard it on South Pacific. That's wearing. That's having civilization tattooed to us. That's having the culture tattooed to us as opposed to being able to take it off when we need to.

[64:11]

Take off the beliefs, the preconceived notions and the ideas and just put them away because they're not really necessary. They're too hot or they're too cold or they're just the wrong color for us. Anybody have any comments? Yeah? Well, I think that this paragraph could be a koan for a very long time, but I've noticed that it's hitting into a very vulnerable place in me. is the tendency to have a tattoo rather than wear it. What we think is right, help, and how do we balance that?

[65:12]

Like a bow that's to be folded carefully and taken care of mindfully or not, and seen clearly. That means... Well, we have ten minutes, so let's go on. I don't intend to say this. We should be like a boatman. A boatman is on the boat. But actually, the boatman is carried by a boat. But actually, the boatman is handling the boat. This is how we live in this park.

[66:21]

We know how, now, if I explain in this way, you feel as if you understood how you live in this difficult world. But actually, even though you understand how, you know, like Buddha, but It does not mean you are able to do it. To do it is very difficult. That is actually why you practice that. Yes. So this is a continuation of the prior paragraph about civilization, wearing civilization, being in the boat.

[67:35]

The interdependency of riding in the boat and controlling the boat at the same time. Sometimes the wind comes up and the boat goes places where we don't want it to go. But then to be in control of the boat, even when that's happening, that's... That's a nice thing to be able to do. It's interesting that he says, it is very difficult, which is why you practice Zazen, why we practice Zazen. Certainly that's one of the reasons I practice Zazen, because I like to be, I like to clear my mind and have it be able to make good decisions about steering the boat. And when I'm too full of civilization, sometimes I steer the boat the way civilization wants me to steer it rather than the way a queer mind would steer it.

[68:47]

That's the way I'd say that. So, this next paragraph, you'll be happy to hear he says it's okay to move if your legs hurt. Yesterday I said, however painful your legs are, But I talked about the confidence and determination to practice. It should be like that. But there's no need for it.

[69:57]

But your determination should be like that, and should be also. When I say should be, that is good example, but it is not all. necessarily deserve always so let me put my two cents worth in don't move that's the but if you have to go ahead for me personally during sashim's The not moving part in the pain really helps me clear my mind. I guess that's a good way to say it. I'm not quite sure how to say it, but that's the way I'll say it right now.

[71:13]

And the experience of letting go of the pain is kind of the experience of letting go of civilization or letting go of my ego or letting go of all the concerns And so, in a sense, the pain teaches me about myself. So that's why I say don't move. If you move too soon, I don't think you have that opportunity to really learn who it is you are. For me, that's been the case. That's just my personal experience about it. And other people have different experiences. And of course, we don't want anybody to have any kind of injury, having a leg or knee injury where they have to go get knee surgery or something like that. So, only you really know for sure what it is you should be doing with your body. The secret of Soto Zen is, you know, just do well.

[72:21]

Not always so. Three words. In English. In Japanese, two words. Not always so. This is secret teaching. If you understand things in that way, you don't ignore, you know. It may be so, but it is not always so. you will understand things in that way. And without being caught by words or rules, without too much, Preconceived idea.

[73:24]

We should actually do something. And doing something, you should apply your teaching. Peter? This may be obvious, but I think that, going back to the calligraphy, when he says, you referred to it, I think you said, You may understand how to live life, but that doesn't mean you can do it. This is why we practice Zazen. This is why I had to do it. I think that was the end of the whole conversation he started a long time ago about, I think I know why we practice Zazen. You come here to practice Zazen looking for something true, looking for something real. A whole long talk. I'm always moved by how... I mean, when you think about it, it's so deflated.

[74:30]

I mean, it's such a... You know, like, you think you come for this, you think you come for this, but really you come because you don't know how to do anything. But he has such a gentle, long-winded way of doing it that by the time you get to that phrase, you don't even realize that that's what's happening. But I just think it's a beautiful teaching, that way that's all constructed. It's just... I don't know. So, I'm going to skip over since I think we're running out of time. And I wanted to pay the very last second. It's very quiet, so... Look at that again. Look at that. I love the way he says that. It's much quieter than all the rest of it.

[75:30]

Okay, well, we've got, I don't know, a couple of minutes, I guess. There's a certain similarity there. Because a lot of Zen people giggle. Especially red, it makes it seem really harsh. Right. All those teeth falling, water turns into fire. OK. Well, the status of these, you know, these 30 tapes is, I think that Gene is working closely with the Berkeley, with the San Francisco Zen Center to try to get them into a place where we can listen to them.

[76:44]

And then also the transcripts where we can get in to a place where we can read the transcripts directly. I think Mel wants this to happen. So you want to hear more of him. I don't think I don't think personally I can give this to anybody because I was not given that authorization. So anyway, I appreciate being able to share it with you. Yeah. The sound quality is really good. Is that because there's been some kind of... Yeah, I did some editing. I did some noise reduction for it, so that it didn't... Yeah, right. It was a good tape to begin with, but cranking up this did have a lot of hiss, and I cut a lot of that hiss down. I would like to find a way to reduce the... when he clears his throat, there's a real spike,

[77:50]

some videos, some film of them too, and the clearing of the throat turned out to be really helpful because then they could match the speaking with the, they had the tapes and they had the quiet film, and the only way they could match them was using the clearing of the throat. That's interesting. Right. The audio part. Does he heal with it, or is that why it falls? Well this is in 69, I don't know. Do you know, Walter? Was he sick at that point, or? He was almost a little marginal. Yeah. I mean, physically, he's very frail. I think he died in 71, right? So, was it 71? 72. Okay, so this was a two and a half year old. Yeah, this was August of 69. So, yeah. So, he was, yeah. Yeah. It was really nice because it was my first time hearing his voice too and I've always wanted to hear it. It fit just the way I thought it would.

[78:54]

Thanks.

[78:55]

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