Hōtō, Spring 1975 — shorter pieces

April 1975 · Haiku Zendo, Los Altos

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This entry is not a single continuous talk. It gathers the shorter pieces printed across one issue of the newsletter, which appear here as they were found rather than stitched into a whole.

On Ignorance — the past is a flower of the future; planning as the biggest ignorance

The deep root of ignorance is in the endless future, as the past is a flower of the future. If you perceive things in this way, it completely fits to this vow. If you know what happens today, and from now on what will happen tomorrow, pretty soon you'll be bored. You'll begin to sleep in the heavenly world. That is the biggest ignorance--to plan so and direct things so, today this will happen, tomorrow this will happen. It's like throwing stepping stones into the future and walking on them.

Temple Discussion — questioning whether the place fits the practice

One thing we have to know is, as space for our practice, is this really a suitable place or not. If the present practice doesn't fit to this place, we have a big burden. Personally I was feeling this was a good chance to formalize in material structure all that has been up to now.

Temple Discussion — jumping from reality to ideal; a great pleasure to build a zendo

If you jump too much from reality to ideal, in order to do zazen you have to wait a long time. I'm pretty sure this happens. The land is not in our hand yet so we just imagine how we may feel. It is a great pleasure to build a little zendo on land.
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