I vow to face the truth at the hands of Tiger Twist Awards. Good morning. There were two events which took me away from here this month. One was in Lausanne. It's not working. Now is it working? It's on. Oh, it's on. I keep on raising the volume up and up and up until you crank to the top. Sit closer if you're hearing this. It's so good. Well, there were two events this month which took me away from here. One was in Los Angeles and the other one was in Japan.

[01:01]

So the one in Los Angeles was a lay ordination called Jukai, which means taking precepts. Actually, it was not lay ordination. It was taking the precepts as a lay person in a Japanese style. And this was at Zenchuji, which is the headquarters of Soto Zen in America. in Los Angeles. And it was the 80th anniversary of the establishment of Zen Shuji as the Soto Zen temple, the first Soto Zen temple in America. Actually, in Los Angeles, it's Zen Shuji, and in San Francisco, it's Sokoji.

[02:06]

Soko means San Francisco. So we have Soko Hardware Store in San Francisco, which means San Francisco Hardware Store. So these are the two temples, and Zinshuji has always been, not always, but has for a long time been the head temple, which is run by a Japanese congregation. So we have very little contact with Japanese Buddhists Soto Zen Buddhists, because our practice is totally different. Our practice is based on Zazen, and Japanese people's practice is based on church, like going to church, very much like a Christian church.

[03:08]

So I don't want to go through all the explanation of how that all happened, So this Jukai ceremony was a very big, in order to commemorate the 80th anniversary, they had a Jukai ceremony in which they gave the precepts to over a hundred people at one time, one at a time. And so I was of course invited to come to that and It was a week-long event. In the old days, before everybody got so busy, it was a week-long event for everybody. But as people become more busy, those ceremonies get the time space is the same except that the participation becomes less, people participate less.

[04:24]

So many priests came from Japan to officiate at this Jukai ceremony and the priests did most of the officiating and preparation and rehearsals and ceremonies. Every day was filled with ceremonies, many of which were pretty much the same. And somewhat strenuous ceremonies, a lot of bowing and chanting and so forth. And then the last few days, the lay people became present, and they rehearsed, and then they did this Jukai ceremony, which is very elaborate. You know, the Japanese ceremonies are very, always well worked out, and precise, and elaborate, very different than our ceremonies, which are more expedient, fortunately.

[05:35]

Yeah, but there are two aspects to teaching and to conducting practice. One is called the transmission aspect, and the other is the shamanistic aspect. The transmission aspect is the orderly way that things are done. So there's certain certain ceremonies and ways of doing things are transmitted from one generation to the next and that keeps things orderly and intact and makes for continuity. The shamanistic aspect is where more wild where one has direct contact with the spiritual world and feels more empowered by their own understanding or by the understanding that's come forth.

[06:54]

So these two aspects both play a part. So sometimes we, you know, we like to think about the erratic Zen master who has his own way of doing things. And then there's the very careful, neat, orderly aspect where people do what they're supposed to. So there's something about how these two aspects work together that makes it for vitality. If you only have the shamanistic aspect, then things get out of hand easily. And if you only have the orderly aspect, things become very deadeningly ritualistic. In Japan today, the orderly aspect is kind of dominant. And so the vitality is very low. In America, we like to have a combination

[08:00]

I mean, we feel that there's more vitality, actually, in our practice. And we should never lose that vitality, otherwise practice becomes kind of dead. When we were there, there were a couple of priests from Japan They couldn't speak very good English, but they got across, they were saying, how do you think we can revitalize our practice in Japan? It's an interesting question. You people seem to have such a vital practice in America. How do you do that? I appreciate our practice very much. So the other part of my going to Japan was that at Suzuki Roshi's temple, Rinzou-in, in Yaizu, they were having the 33rd anniversary, not anniversary, memorial service of Suzuki Roshi.

[09:23]

And they were having, 33rd somehow is a big, that number is a significant number, and so they have a big memorial service. So I had to leave before the end of the Los Angeles event and go to Japan for that event. So I didn't get to see the whole Jukai ceremony, which probably would have been interesting because our Jukai ceremony is very different than their Jukai ceremony. Their ceremony is that the priests from the many related temples come together and do this ceremony for the Danka. The Danka is the contributors or the members of the congregation. And

[10:26]

it's not really called lay ordination, it's called just receiving the precepts and one receives a lineage chart but they don't receive a robe. When we started giving lay ordination at Zen Center in 1970, I think it was, although there was a lay ordination ceremony in the late 50s or 1960s, there was nothing until 1970. So Suzuki Roshi, I think, felt that what we call lay people are not lay people in the sense of donka, people who support the temple and go to church. our lay people are actually practitioners. So when we receive a raksu and have the lay ordination, it's actually a lay ordination.

[11:36]

So there are priest ordination and lay ordination and juhkai. Those are three different things. So in lay ordination, One is a householder and practices as a householder, but we have this in-between thing which no one else has, in which the members are the supporters, I mean the practitioners are the supporters of the practice of the Zen Do. We don't have people who just give money to support the temple and then come on Sunday for a sermon. Well, we do have that, but what keeps our main body of practice is our practitioners, people who come and sit zazen and practice a real practice. So it's very different. And this is lay ordination that we have. even though Jukai is the precept part of the lay ordination.

[12:42]

Seems like you're not calling it a Sangha. You call it something different from a Sangha, a congregation or a Jukai. Probably so, yeah. Sangha is ordained people, strictly speaking. Strictly speaking, Sangha is ordained people. So, I think of our Sangha as Sangha, but in Japan I think you would think of it as parishioners and Sangha more. There may be some people who have lay ordination, but it's not the common thing. Anyway, so I went to Japan for Suzuki Roshi's memorial service and the priests from, you know, Rinzuin is 570 years old or something like that, an old temple, and there are many child temples and grandchild temples related to it.

[14:05]

So when there's an event like that, the priests from the related temples come and help do the ceremonies. So it was quite a wonderful ceremony, and I went with Blanche Hartman, who is the former abbot of the Zen Center, after me, and one other person, Mark Lesser, who lectured here one time recently and was recently ordained. So the three of us went from here and we were well received and participated in the ceremony at some point, which is unusual. And then after the ceremony, I told Hoitsu that I wanted to say something. you know, to, I thought I'd do a poem or something like that, but I didn't push it.

[15:11]

And then we had, there was, after the ceremony, there was this big dinner, you know, at a restaurant, and all the Danka were there. And then he asked me to get to say something. So I talked about Suzuki Roshi and about my relationship to Hoitsu, his son, and to Rinzou in the temple. And I said something like, I have to paraphrase what I said, but I said, when Suzuki Roshi came to America, he didn't do anything. And suddenly there was big silence. I said, he really didn't do anything. He just came to America and sat satsang. And Zen Center just grew up. around him and he didn't give any real direction, or he did of course, but he didn't try to create something.

[16:16]

He simply was the catalyst for allowing us to create our Zen practice. And then I talked about how Hoitsu, his son, completed the Dharma transmission for me and how generous Hoitsu and his wife and his family were to anybody from America who came to the temple and how open he was to everyone and all of them are, and maybe the most generous people I've ever known. And when I gave that talk, after I gave that talk, Hoitsu and his wife, and Suzuki Roshi's wife, Okusan, who is now almost 90 and very spry, and you wouldn't believe it, she does push-ups every day.

[17:28]

told me how grateful they were for that talk because she said this is the very first time that the Danka has ever had any inkling of what went on after 50 years. You know, they knew something and Utsu was kind of reluctant to talk about it, you know. They see these Americans come and they saw Suzuki Roshi go to America. It's like, you know, like your father went to Japan and disappeared, you know, and you hear certain things but you have no idea what really went on, you know, so they really didn't had no idea what really went on here. They heard that there was their father, you know, Suzuki Roshi came to America but he did something and then these Americans started coming to Rinzowin and it's all kind of murky and mysterious to them. So they were very grateful for that information.

[18:39]

And I'd like to go back again and talk to them some more about what actually happened and what's going on. And also when I was there, there were some albums of the history of Suzuki Roshi in pictures. And I want to go back and copy those so that we can, and kind of the history of those pictures. So that's a little project that I'm going to do maybe next year. So that was very satisfactory. The temple is wonderful. Some of you have been there. It's always kind of a wonderful, a very wonderful experience too. go to that old temple and you know Huitzu and his family are kind of half into the modern world and half into the ancient world without thinking of it as the ancient world.

[19:48]

It's just like because they live in the temple there's a tie to the history and the way they do things is kind of a mixture of today and yesterday. And you can see that, how they make it all work together. But they're always very busy, the busiest people I've ever seen. Because there's always so many demands on them. Hoitsu does memorial services all the time. And he'll come home and maybe eat a few bites and then he's off. And then he'll come home at night after everybody's eaten their dinner and then eat his dinner. And then in the middle of his dinner, he has to get up and rush to do something because he's the only priest there and there's like 500 families or something.

[20:50]

So I hope we don't get into that. Suzuki Roshi didn't want us to get into that. He says in Japan the priests do a lot of, you know, they support themselves with funeral services and people think of the temples as funeral parlors. But if you, when you have a lot of people, a tradition that's so old, people are dying all the time. We're only beginning to get into that. But that will eventually happen with us, too. You said that the same devil down in Los Angeles was like a church and influenced by a Christian.

[21:54]

Well, I said it was like a Christian. I didn't say it was influenced by. Yeah, it could be influenced. It could have that influence. The songs are almost like Christian songs. Yeah, yeah. Is that the same thing in Japan? To some extent, yeah. I haven't been a lot to a lot of places in Japan, so I don't know exactly what they do, but there's this Baika, this singing called Baika, which is plum blossom, And the women do this. They have these beautiful bells, beautiful silver bells, and there'll be a whole chorus of them, about 50 women, and they'll ring the bells together in unison, and then they have a little iron plate, or metal plate, with a little metal hammer, and so they ring the bell, ching, ching, and chant, dong, dong, and they hit the, but it's all together, and the rhythm is very precise and kind of slow,

[22:58]

and very beautiful actually, very ethereal kind of music, singing. So that was part of the ceremony as well. But you see, people don't do zazen in Japan very much. It's not like here. It's not like here. People, you know, we're in America, we're jack of all trades, you know. We have our tools, you know, and we have our You know, we do everything, but in Japan, mostly, people do one thing. If you're a carpenter, that's what you do. You're not a motor mechanic. You don't work on your car. You take it to somebody else to do that. Of course, nowadays, you can't work on your car anyway. So a priest is a priest, a layperson is a layperson, and so forth. So there are opportunities for laypeople to practice, but it's not the same as here. where we do everything, right?

[24:00]

We go to work and we get up in the morning, we do zazen. It's just not, there was one man that comes to zazen in the morning at Rinzuen from outside. It's just not like that. Our practice is totally unique, different. Anyway, but all the temples have zendos. but they're not really used. Grace Sherison goes to Japan. She goes to Tofukuji. Tofukuji is a Rinzai monastery. But doesn't that mean that lay people can go? They can go, yes, but they don't get up every morning and go to Zazen. So they just don't do that? This is like, they go to Sashin. Oh, so lay people go to Sashin. Yeah, some. Some lay people go to Sashin. Not very many, a handful.

[25:01]

So the other thing I was interested in was the Inari Kitsune, which is sometimes called the fox cult in Japan. I noticed when I, every time I go to Japan, I've noticed that in many temples, there's a shrine with foxes, beautiful fox sculptures that are kind of like the guardians or something, maybe the guardians, you could call them, of the shrine. And that's called, the foxes are called kitsune. And the shrine is dedicated to the Inari, which is the spirit world. And wherever Buddhism goes in the world, and Buddhism is always traveling from one place to another,

[26:22]

just called the process of assimilation. Once Buddhism becomes established, it assimilates the local deities into its practice. So when Buddhism came to China, it adapted the Confucianism and Taoism into Buddhism. And the Confucianism and the Taoist deities became incorporated and given their place, which is very different than a lot of other religions which go in and eliminate the local deities. They incorporate them. So these old animistic cults or animistic spiritual practices became incorporated into Buddhism in Japan as well.

[27:36]

And Shinto, which is the indigenous practice in Japan, became incorporated into Buddhism. for a long time, Shinto and Buddhism were very much together. But then at a certain point, the government separated them. So that was very tricky. That was very painful in many ways. It caused a lot of problems. So we have these two sides, the Shinto side and the Buddhist side, and people do both. And in China, they do the same thing. In China, people will go to a Taoist temple, they'll go to a Buddhist temple, they'll go to a Confucian, whatever, without, they don't discriminate so much. And it kind of is all the same, you know, to most people. And in Japan, there's the Buddhist kitsune inari and the Shinto kitsune inari.

[28:46]

So, It's fascinated me and I've been trying to understand more and more about it. So I went to the Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto, just east of Kyoto, which is a Shinto shrine, big mountain. It's the oldest Inari shrine in Japan. Well, it comes around year 800 or something in that century. And just visiting these places and visiting all these shrines and just getting a feeling for that is quite wonderful. It's just fascinating to me, you know, that Fox is like an intermediary. And a lot of the Soto Zen

[29:50]

temples train their priests to help people or to keep this going for the lay people, even though they may or may not believe in it. But it's a big mystique, you know, like the foxes. People, you know, it gets to be, you have to be very careful about foxes. And every tradition, I think, has a fox tradition. Every culture has a fox tradition, and it's very much the same. The American Indians, the Chinese, any place where there are foxes, there's a fox, and the fox is the trickster. The fox can either do wonderful things or terrible things, and also can change shape. shape-shifting is what it's called.

[30:53]

So, you never know whether your friend or somebody on the bus is a person or a fox. There's an old story about, actually the name Kitsune came to be established was there was a man and he had a wife and he had a couple of dogs. And the dog was always barking at the wife. Dogs and foxes don't get along together. Foxes are more like cats than they are like dogs, even though they kind of look like dogs. They're more on the cat side temperamentally than they are on the dog side. They're just mysterious. And so the dog kept barking at the wife, and there was no way he could control the dog from barking at the wife. So one day the wife leapt up on a fence and turned into a fox.

[32:01]

And he realized that his wife was a fox all this time, but he liked sleeping with her. So he asked her to come back every night and sleep with him. And so one, one derivation of the name kitsune is come and sleep with me. So the whole thing is quite wonderful. There's a lot of folklore around this stuff, but the Soto school in Japan is very much connected with this, and so is the Rinzai school, but I think more the Soto school. I asked Hoitsu, I talked to him about this and he said, oh yeah, we have one of those shrines, you've probably seen it, it's in the garden. And he said, people come there once in a while and they make some offerings. Kitsune is a kind of sushi, you've probably seen it.

[33:06]

It's a little brown bag that's wrapped with rice and it's sweet, kitsune sushi. And they leave that out for the foxes. They fry it and leave it out for the foxes who don't usually eat it. It's not fox food, but maybe they do sometimes. So I went and I got some, they have these little statues they sell of foxes. Well, the fox also, the whole Inari kitsune thing is connected to the rice harvest. So the appearance of foxes have indications of how the rice harvest is going to work out and so forth, it's all connected.

[34:09]

And of course the kami, you know, the spirits are very much connected with the rice harvest. So thinking about this I realized that in the older world people were connected to animals and the relationship to animals is very different than our relationship to animals. Our relationship is to dogs and cats mostly and maybe ducks or sometimes canaries, you know, parrots, but we don't have that connection so much with the animal world and the ground world, you know, and to see how all that works together and the communication, you know, like the crow spoke to me, you know, and we think, well, that's kind of nuts, you know, but it's not that the crow spoke to me. the crow said something and it evoked something in my own mind.

[35:13]

And it's not that the fox brought a message from the Inari, but there's something about the fox that evoked something in my fox nature or evoked something in me that made me understand something. If you live in that world without all the kind of help that we have today, scientific help, you have a different orientation. And it's meaningful, very meaningful for people. But we don't know how to read that anymore. We've kind of lost that way of reading or connecting to the world. So, you know, it's kind of interesting. I always think of superstition has two sides.

[36:18]

One side is you kind of believe literally in things. And the other side is that there's a kind of connection to things which is intuitive. allows you to evoke certain kinds of intuitive understanding. But it's tricky, like the fox. Oh. Then the other thing I did in Japan was after that I went to Kyoto and stayed with my old friends, Diane and David Riggs, who are old practitioners, but for a long time I knew them through practice, but in the last 10 or 15 years they've been studying as scholars, they've become scholars.

[37:33]

they're on grants, they have these grants being supported in Japan to study. And Diane, her subject is studying the Buddhist robe, the history and varieties of the Buddhist robe, which is an interesting study. And one, One of the things that she's studying is called funzu-e, which means, you know, when Buddha, in Buddha's time, when people became ordained into the Sangha, they would go to a carnal ground or a dump and collect old rags and they would take the old rags and sew them together and then dye them as a robe.

[38:40]

So the robes were made out of old rags. Nowadays, I mean for a long, long time, centuries, the robe is cut out of one piece of cloth and then sewn together again. And the cloth is sewn in the shape and configuration of a rice field. So there's the rice fields, and then the large pieces, and then the narrow pieces, the narrow strips, which are the pathways. So if you see a rice field, you see the rice field, and then there are the pathways, like a patchwork, and that's a patchwork robe, which means it's like being covered with the earth, wearing that robe, which is like a picture or a representation of the earth.

[39:52]

So, you know, cutting out, taking one big piece of cloth and then you cut it out and you put it together in this way. Seems funny, but actually it's the way everything works, because the universe is one big piece of rope, one big piece of cloth, but it keeps getting cut into little pieces and being put together in various ways to make the diversity of life. But it's really just one whole piece and so that's a kind of model of oneness and diversity. reconstructing this funzu-e, which is a kind of lost tradition.

[40:57]

People in Japan have been researching this and making these robes. David took a picture, he went to this temple of Minzan, who was a 16th century, 17th century famous Zen master, and they let him see the Menzan's robe, which was a Funza-e robe. It was just a gorgeous robe made of patches, little patches and big patches and blues and yellows. It looked like a work of art, and yet it was simply something that was just thrown together, sewed together. But when people make these robes, it's hard to not make them artfully.

[41:59]

So the kind of problem, you know, is this art or is this making something from cast-off cloth? that's not good for anything else. But I think that you cannot help but make art when you're doing this because your eye selects things that go together harmoniously. There's one man, a priest, who makes these robes that are very colorful And a lot of the people say, well, it's too bright, too bright. But I think that thinking about it, it's not too bright because it reflects the world.

[43:03]

I was going to say something, I can't remember what it was. But in Buddha's time, even though you put all these pieces together, you always dyed it to be one color. But if you have different pieces of material, they don't all come out the same color. So it's subtle. So I think that's an interesting thing anyway. So I'm still thinking about that, what that means. Do you have any questions? I wanted to ask you if there is a shamanic aspect with the fox and the spirit world that is from traditional Japanese soto zen.

[44:31]

Yeah, there is a demonic aspect as well as an angelic aspect. Paul? Well, there's two Pauls. The second Paul behind. Do you think we should incorporate Jesus into our practice? Well, I used to, at Christmas time, there was a few times when I did a service during Christmas and put up a something to just not to incorporate but to acknowledge. I was just thinking that there's transcendental aspects of the Christian religion and that conception of God is positive, whereas our conception of the absolute is kind of the negative.

[45:35]

Well, the negative is the positive. If you don't understand that the negative is the positive, you don't understand Buddhism. But I don't think we need to assimilate Christianity. I was thinking about the difference between the left wing and the right wing. The left wing doesn't talk about Christianity but abides by true Christian understanding. Whereas the right-wing talks about Christianity, but doesn't do that. Excuse me. What are the Sashins like in Japan as opposed to here? Well, they're like our Sashins.

[46:36]

I mean, except that they're, you know, culturally different. I mean, there's some differences, but they're pretty much the same. Way, way in the back. As far back as you can go. Yeah. Yeah, I wondered about whether things are changing in terms of women's role in Buddhism. I know that they have, obviously, temples where there are nuns practicing. Is there any discussion of women becoming priests there? Well, there are priests. Are there? But due to our influence, there's more, little by little, respect for women priests in our school in Japan. So would a woman be the abbess of a temple? Yeah.

[47:39]

Before, even though there were, I'm not clear on this really, but often there'd be a male abbot for a nunnery. But now there are some women abbots for the nunneries. Little progress, little by little. because of our recognition of women in our practice and when the Japanese come here they see how we practice together and also how we've kind of insisted that they respect our women as practitioners and it's taken some time for that to happen but the people that relate to us take it very seriously.

[48:43]

And so they always include, I've worked very hard to, Blanche Hartman, who is my deshi, when I, this is very complicated, I can't explain it all, but, to get her registered as a priest in Japan, very difficult, but just by insisting and not backing down and keeping the subject alive, they accepted that. And so she was the first woman to be registered as an American priest in Japan. But there's still some glitches. And it's getting to be ten after, so yeah.

[49:51]

Oh, did you have a question? I was going to say, I thought that actually we have really incorporated Christianity and Judaism into practice, and that in time we will be able to see that more clearly, and we will acknowledge But one thing, I remember hearing Gary Snyder talk about how Japanese culture looked to us like Puritanism. That is to say, because it's a work oriented, but it is not Puritanism because it doesn't have the guilt factor that we have. So although it looks to us like something very familiar, it actually is quite different. But we have incorporated that factor into our practice. The non-guilt? The guilt.

[50:54]

No, that's Jewish. Because there's so many Jewish people practicing Zen, we have incorporated the guilt factor. I don't know what you mean exactly. Well, I mean, you mean the guilt? It's a longer conversation. I don't think we can, you can't take more than 10 steps on these shores no matter where you come from. You're already starting to swallow Judeo-Christian and Puritan cultures. I mean, it's just impossible. It doesn't matter whether you come from Ethiopia or Thailand. You're already into it. Yeah, I see. But I don't know about guilt, of course it permeates our practice, but who we are, our history, permeates our practice. I just think there will come a time when we start to acknowledge this more.

[52:00]

I mean, Paul's question about Jesus, and I don't know what that would mean, but I think, for instance, Well, I think acknowledgement, you know, I don't know about assimilation, but I think acknowledgement is like important. Acknowledgement and appreciating the values, the true values. if you don't keep some separation then it becomes kind of mishmash, but to recognize the similarities and even maybe some of the values that are more accentuated in Christianity than maybe in

[53:04]

And to see those as good examples for us to incorporate, I think that's good too. But to say that we're also Christian, well, you can say that. I can say I'm Japanese, even though I'm not. But I remember one time I said that to Suzuki Roshi. He said, well, these are Japanese people. They were doing something. I said, okay, if we do look, kind of go in there No, these are Japanese people. I said, well, I'm Japanese too. But, in one sense, yeah, we're all Christian, we're all Jewish, we're all Muslim, we're all Buddhists, great. On the other hand, this is a Buddhist practice. That's a Christian practice. If we just mush it all together, I think that's so good.

[54:08]

Eventually, we'll say, well, you know, the world's all coming together and eventually it'll all be one religion, right? That won't happen. Because there are different temperaments, different ways that we feel and think and understand our life. So you can also say, well, eventually there'll be one world and there won't be any borders. Maybe. But there's also something about borders that's important as well. See, oneness is great, but diversity is also important. That's what I think. It was just at the beginning you talked about Buddhism incorporating deities, so I don't think we can be outside of that. So, you know, if you look at Buddhism and see this in the Chantry, it's very clear to us that the bond, you know, pre-Buddhism came into Tibetan Buddhism, and you can see that.

[55:21]

And so I'm questioning whether or not we shouldn't see what we've actually incorporated. Yeah, I think that's right. OK. Good.

[55:47]

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